Holocaust

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HOLOCAUST

The word holocaust, derived from a term used in an early Greek translation of the Old Testament meaning a religious offering completely consumed by fire, has had several distinct usages in English. Since the seventeenth century or earlier it had been used to refer to any mass slaughter or disaster. In the late 1940s the term "The Holocaust" started to be used to refer collectively to the calamity that befell all those targeted and victimized by Nazi oppression from 1933 to 1945, particularly Jews, Gypsies (more properly known as Roma), various Slavic population groups, and the victims of eugenic killing programs. In time, the term was increasingly used to refer to the policies and programs aimed at the extermination of particular population groups individually, notably European Jewry and the Roma.

Subsequently, the word has also been used to refer to genocides or other major human rights abuses directed against other population groups in other parts of the world and in various epochs. Finally, the term came to be used by some to refer to any kind of disturbance seen as significant to the user. In effect, this is a return to the word's general meaning prior to World War II.

This varied usage of the term "The Holocaust," no doubt fueled by the various personal and collective tragedies associated with such events, has given rise to a series of debates about the uniqueness of the events themselves (see, for example, Rosenbaum, 2001). Is "The Holocaust," referring to the experience of European Jewry or the Roma, unique? Does it differ in kind from what happened to others in World War II or from mass killings at other times? The answers to these questions are complex and often contentious. In an important sense every genocide is unique and warrants its own terminology. Thus the Hebrew word Shoah is often used to refer to the Jewish Holocaust and the Roma word Porrajmos to refer to the Roma Holocaust. (One of the first modern uses of the term "Holocaust" was in Israel in 1947 as an English translation of the word shoah.) On the other hand, the experiences of European Jews and Roma between 1933 and 1945 are classic examples of genocide under international law.

According to Raul Hilberg's authoritative 1985 account of the Jewish Holocaust, the Holocaust was an extended "destruction process" that consisted of several steps: "definition, expropriation, concentration, and annihilation." The same phased process was roughly followed in the persecution of European Roma, the other group targeted for destruction solely on "racial" grounds.

Direct Holocaust mortality–in the sense of deaths resulting from explicit state policies and programs–had four major components:

Those killed as a result of various euthanasia programs beginning in late 1939;
Those killed by the Schutzstaffel (S.S.)–directed mobile killing teams (called Einsatzgruppen) that operated just behind the front lines as the German army advanced into the USSR, Soviet-occupied Poland, and the Baltic countries beginning in June 1941;
Those killed as a result of planned starvation or overwork in ghettos and concentration camps or other forced labor situations; and
Those killed in extermination camps (i.e., facilities designed explicitly for mass killings, the first of which began operations in December 1941) and during mass transports to such camps.

Some writers, including Yahuda Bauer, do not consider the euthanasia program to be part of the Holocaust. In any case, in terms of magnitude, most Holocaust deaths can be directly attributed to the extermination camps and the Einsatzgruppen.

The Role of Population Science and Population-Related Programs in the Holocaust

Population science intersected with the Holocaust in several ways. These include: the contributions of population-related "science" in shaping concerns about Jews and other target populations, and in providing legal and technical support for conducting various facets of the Holocaust; the direct incorporation of population data systems in Holocaust operations; and the use of demographic data and analysis by the perpetrators and those acting on behalf of the victims to document Holocaust losses.

Population data and analyses, discussions of population policies, and eugenic principles (then considered a well-established element of population science) all contributed in important ways to the intellectual and ideological milieu from which the Holocaust sprang. Perceived population problems and policies focused both on declining fertility in Europe within the context of nationalism, and on the threats posed by other countries or by groups, such as the Jews and the Roma, who were seen as racially alien. Indeed, in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and particularly in Germany, the "Jewish problem"–for which the Holocaust became "the final solution"–was frequently defined as a population problem. Solutions to the Jewish problem were also expressed in large part in terms of population-related governmental actions: marriage and fertility restrictions, forced migration, and ultimately programs of mass killing.

The eugenics movement not only provided an intellectual rationale for considering certain population groups to be inferior, even less than human, but also provided examples of how "sound eugenic principles" could be implemented through governmental action. For example, the Nazis established a forced sterilization program in Germany within months of taking power, explicitly citing the eugenics-based forced sterilization laws of the United States as a model. By the late 1930s the Nazi government took up the call of two German scholars for the "destruction of life unworthy of life" by instituting eugenically-justified forced euthanasia.

In 1940 and 1941 the forced euthanasia program expanded in scope from child euthanasia to include adults, and its coverage successively widened from the most severely medically disabled to eventually include all those institutionalized people who were unable to do productive work or who were members of "unworthy" races. Stimulated by the logistical challenges of such an expanded program, its managers developed the technology of mass killing (gas and cremation) subsequently used in the extermination camps. Moreover, beginning in 1941 the Nazis directly transferred equipment and staff from the euthanasia program to assist the Einsatzgruppen killing teams and in the establishment of the extermination camps.

Even seemingly-benign sectors of the population field became involved in the effort. For example, individual institutions often initiated euthanasia operations under the guise of statistical investigations. Similarly, a range of population data systems, including population registration systems and regular population censuses, were used to assist in the general planning of the Holocaust in several countries, as well as in the identification and targeting of individuals and families for deportation and of neighborhoods for mob violence.

Estimating the Toll

Two sets of demographers were attempting to document the progress of the Holocaust even while it was underway. Richard Korherr, a German demographer on the staff of Heinrich Himmler–head of the German secret police and the S.S.–was secretly commissioned in late 1942 to assess the decline in the European Jewish population on behalf of the perpetrators. Quite independently, between 1942 and 1945 several Jewish demographers were producing independent estimates of Holocaust-related Jewish losses, which were largely ignored. Estimates of Holocaust losses also were part of the pleadings and judgments during the course of the International War Crimes trials beginning in 1945.

Subsequently, many Holocaust scholars, including some with demographic expertise, have attempted to refine estimates of overall losses. Efforts at mortality estimation continued in the 1990s, in connection with a new series of reparation claims. Given the substantial uncertainties of definition and measurement involved, however, none of them offers persuasive grounds to abandon the estimate of about six million Holocaust deaths–the number cited by the perpetrators at Nuremberg, independently developed by victim advocates at the time, and accepted by the Nuremberg Tribunal itself.

See also: Genocide.