How many Jews died in World War II. Why did Hitler hate the Jews? This is how the myth of the Holocaust was born.
Why did the Germans kill six million Jews? This question is difficult to answer. Some historians believe that the Nazis had planned the extermination of the Jews ever since they seized power in 1933. Other historians believe that the extermination of the Jews was the result of a specific historical context and therefore was not originally planned.
background
In the early 1930s, during the Nazi rise to power, Germany experienced great economic and social difficulties. Country:
- had to pay huge compensation to the allies as a result of the defeat in the First World War;
- had to adhere to the Treaty of Versailles, according to which she could no longer have a large army and had to give up some territories;
- experienced high inflation and economic instability;
- experienced high levels of unemployment.
Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for Germany's economic and social problems. The Nazi Party promised to resolve these issues, and in 1932 received 37% of the vote in the elections.
The rise of the Nazis to power
All Jews and non-Aryans were excluded from German society. They could no longer own government jobs, own property, or run their own businesses. In 1935, the government passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stated that only Aryans could be German citizens. The Nazis believed that the "purebred" German was racially superior, and that a struggle for survival existed between the German race and those races that were considered inferior. They saw Jews, Gypsies, Sinti, black people and the disabled as a serious biological threat to the purity of the German-Aryan race.
Racial politics
According to a large group of historians, the "race war" against the Soviet Union, which began in 1941, took place in a certain historical context, where it became possible to kill people - Jews, Poles and Russians - in a new and terrible manner.
The Nazi racial policy between 1933 and 1945 consisted of two elements: eugenics and racial segregation (later racial extermination).
Thus, the Nazis tried to keep their own "race" free from anomalies and diseases (eugenics) and to keep the Aryan race closed to other "inferior" races (racial segregation and extermination). In the name of eugenics, the Nazis initiated the forced sterilization of hereditary patients and euthanized about 200,000 mentally and physically disabled Germans.
Another part of the racial policy, racial segregation, was initiated with the aim of suppressing and persecuting all non-Aryans, primarily Jews. Later, racial segregation was tightened and became a policy of racial expulsion: Jews were forced to emigrate. This policy succeeded successfully in Austria in 1938 and then was introduced in Germany itself under the slogan: “ Germany for the Germans!". But why did the Germans kill the Jews in the first place? Most historians believe that Hitler's personal dislike for this race was most influenced by this.
The collapse of the policy of forced emigration
It would seem that the Nazis would stop at the law of forced emigration. So why did the Germans kill Jews during the war? The fact is that after the occupation of Poland in 1939, the policy of forced emigration became unsuitable for the Nazi regime. It was simply unrealistic for over 3 million Polish Jews to emigrate. This led to ambitious Nazi plans to solve the "Jewish Question". On January 20, 1942, under the leadership of Police Chief Reinhard Heydrich, several senior officials of the Nazi state met to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". As a result of this meeting, Heydrich received full support from the participants for the systematic extermination of the Jews. The decision itself, the extermination of the Jews, was presumably taken before the conference.
Extermination policy
In 1941, the Nazi leadership determined the future of the Jews. Starting this year, Jews have been executed and killed on an incredibly large scale. The massacres began in connection with the war against the Soviet Union, which started on June 22, 1941. In total, 1.5 million Jews were killed in the occupied Soviet territories - with the help of local anti-Semites. Almost simultaneously, mass executions began in six "extermination camps" located in Poland. At least 3 million Jews died in these camps. To this must be added another 1.5 million Jews who died in concentration camps, ghettos and elsewhere as a result of starvation, slave labor and arbitrary executions.
The history of mankind, perhaps, does not remember a more cruel crime than the Holocaust. From the Greek language, this term is translated as "burnt offering", it became widespread only after the 1950s. The story of the victims of the Holocaust is the terrible catastrophe of European Jewry that began in 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and established the absolute dictatorship of the National Socialists. Pseudo-scientific racial theories and the desire to cleanse the German nation of those who were considered objectionable served as the guide of the new government. The most devastating blow then had to be experienced by the Jews, and even children became victims of the Holocaust.
- Why were Jews the victims of the Holocaust?
- History of hatred for Jews
- What do the experts say?
- Number of victims of the Holocaust
- International Holocaust Remembrance Day
- Museums of Holocaust victims
Why were Jews the victims of the Holocaust?
History of hatred for Jews
To the question of why it was the Jews who became victims of the Holocaust, scientists and historians have several reasonable answers, and all of them originate in the mists of time.
Historically, Jews lived outside their homeland for many centuries. Living on the territory of other peoples, they retained their language and religion. In appearance, clothing and traditions, they differed from Europeans. When Christianity arose, Judeophobic ideas about Jews began to form. The Catholic Church accused them of killing Jesus Christ.
In the 5th century, Augustine the Blessed formulated the “correct” Christian attitude towards people of Jewish origin: Jews cannot be killed, but they can and should be humiliated. Thus, the religious consciousness perceived the image of the Jew as something negative, impure. As a result, Jews had to live in separate quarters, their birth rate and freedom of movement were limited by the authorities. They were expelled from different states, including Russia. The connection between religious Judeophobia and the state was very close.
Video about the history of Holocaust victims:
The concept of "anti-Semitism" first appeared in the 19th century. Anti-Semitic sentiments were especially popular in Germany. Hitler, who came to power, unified them in the Nazi ideology and sentenced the Jews to complete annihilation. Nazi ideology assumed that the fault of the Jews lay in the very fact of their birth.
In addition, the list of victims of the Holocaust included all the "subhuman" and "inferior", which were considered all Slavic peoples, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally ill.
The Nazis set themselves the goal of wiping out the Jews as a biological species, making the Holocaust their official policy.
What do the experts say?
Experts express different opinions about the reasons for such a large-scale and unprecedented destruction of people. It is especially unclear why millions of ordinary German citizens participated in this process.
- Daniel Goldhagen considers the main cause of the Holocaust to be anti-Semitism (national intolerance), which at that time massively took over the German consciousness.
- Yehuda Bauer, a leading specialist on the Holocaust, has a similar opinion on this matter.
- The German historian and journalist Gotz Ali suggested that the Nazis supported the policy of genocide because of the property taken from the victims and appropriated by ordinary Germans.
- According to the German psychologist Erich Fromm, the cause of the Holocaust lies in the malignant destructiveness that is inherent in the entire biological human race.
Number of victims of the Holocaust
The number of victims of the Holocaust is horrifying: during World War II, the Nazis destroyed 6 million Jews. However, at present, many researchers argue that in fact there were much more Nazi camps than was commonly believed a few years ago. Accordingly, the number of victims also increases.
Historians have discovered about 42 thousand institutions in which the Nazis isolated, punished and destroyed both Jewish and other groups of the population considered inferior. They carried out this policy in vast territories - from France to the USSR. But the largest number of repressive institutions were in Poland and Germany.
So, in 2000, a project was launched, the purpose of which was to search for death camps, forced labor camps, medical centers in which pregnant women had abortions, prisoner of war camps and brothels, whose kept women were forced to serve the German military. In total, more than 400 scientists took part in the project, taking into account the real facts and memories of the victims of the Holocaust.
After the work done, American researchers released new figures showing how many victims of the Holocaust were actually: about 20 million people.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated on January 27th. This day was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2005, calling on all member countries to develop and educate programs aimed at ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust are remembered by all subsequent generations. The people of the world must remember these terrible events in order to be able to prevent future acts of genocide. Many countries around the world have created memorials and museums that are dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Every year on January 27, mourning ceremonies, commemorative events and actions are held there.
Such events are also held on this day in the Auschwitz memorial camp - a complex of Nazi concentration camps and death camps, where Slavs and Jews - victims of the Holocaust - died en masse in 1940-1945.
According to many scientists, it is very difficult for the human mind to fully comprehend the genocide that originated in a state rich in spiritual traditions and developed culture. These monstrous events took place in civilized Europe practically before the eyes of the whole world. To ensure that such a Holocaust will never happen again, people must strive to understand its origins and consequences.
From the very beginning of the war, it was part of Nazi Germany's policy to massacre civilians. This was especially true of the Jews - later Hitler put forward a policy of "final solution of the issue", that is, the complete destruction of the Jews. The death squads led to the death of about a million people, later numerous massacres began to occur, and then concentration camps appeared, where prisoners were deprived of proper food and medical care. The final point was the construction of death camps - state institutions, the purpose of which was the systematic murder of a huge number of people.
In 1945, when the Allied forces took over many camps during the offensive, they discovered the results of this Nazi policy: hundreds of thousands of hungry and sick prisoners who were locked up along with thousands of dead bodies. And besides, gas chambers, huge buildings of crematoria, thousands of mass graves, thousands of volumes of documentation on non-humanly cruel medical experiments, and much more were discovered. The Nazis killed over ten million people, including six million Jews.
Lebensunwertes Leben, in other words, "a life unworthy of life." One of the most horrific terms in history was used by Nazi German soldiers to refer to human beings whose lives they thought were unimportant, to have no meaning - or to refer to those who were to be killed. At first, this term was applied exclusively to people suffering from a variety of mental disorders, later they began to designate “racially inferior”, or “suffering from sexual deviations” or simply “enemies of the state”, both internal and external. 
1. An emaciated eighteen-year-old Russian girl looks into the camera lens during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. The Dachau concentration camp was the first German concentration camp. It was opened in 1933. Over 200,000 people were held here in inhumane conditions between 1933 and 1945. Officially, 31,591 deaths were announced. The cause of death was disease, malnutrition and suicide. Unlike Auschwitz, Dachau was not officially a "death camp," but the conditions here were so appalling that hundreds of people died every week.
2. This photo was provided by the Paris Holocaust Remembrance Foundation. It depicts the execution of a Ukrainian Jew by a German soldier during a mass execution of local residents in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, approximately between 1941 and 1943. This photograph, titled "The Last Jew in Vinnitsa" (which was the inscription on the back of the photo), was found in a photo album belonging to a German soldier.
3. German soldiers interrogate Jews after the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. In October 1940, the Germans began to move more than 3 million Jews living in Poland into overcrowded ghettos. In the largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, thousands of Jews died due to ongoing epidemics of disease and starvation. In addition, the Nazis soon began mass deportations from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first mass uprising against the Nazi occupation of Europe, lasted from April 19 to May 16, 1943. It began after the soldiers of the German troops and the police entered the ghetto to deport the surviving residents. The uprising ended when the poorly armed uprising participants were defeated by the actions of the outnumbered and well-equipped German troops.
4. A man takes the bodies of dead Jews to the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. People here were dying of hunger right on the streets. Every morning, around 4-5 am, funeral carts collected dozens of dead bodies. The bodies of the dead Jews were massively burned in deep pits.
5. A group of Jews, including a little boy, is taken out of the Warsaw Ghetto, accompanied by German soldiers. Photo taken April 19, 1943. This photograph was part of a report by SS General Stroop to his command, and was presented as evidence of Nazi atrocities during the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945.
6. After the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, the ghetto was completely destroyed. Of the more than 56,000 Jews who were kept there, about 7,000 were shot and the rest were deported to death camps or concentration camps. This photo shows the ruins of the ghetto, which was blown up by German troops. The Warsaw ghetto existed for several years, during which time approximately 300,000 Polish Jews perished there.
7. A German in military uniform shoots a Jewish woman during a mass execution in Mizoch, Ukraine. In October 1942, 1,700 people in the ghetto located in Mizocz revolted against the Germans and the policemen who joined them from among the local population. About half of the inhabitants were able to flee or hide during the uprising. As a result, the uprising was finally crushed. The survivors were captured, they were taken to the ravine and shot. Photo courtesy of the Holocaust Remembrance Foundation in Paris.
8. Jews deported in the Drancy transit camp near Paris, France, in 1942. Drancy was the last stop before putting people in German concentration camps. Approximately 13,152 Jews (including 4,115 children) were captured by the French police, taken from their homes to be taken to the Vel d'Hiv, a winter stadium in southwest Paris, in July 1942. They were later taken to the railway terminal in Drancy, northeast of the French capital, and then deported to the east. Only a few later managed to return home.
9. Anne Frank, the photo was taken in 1941. Photo courtesy of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In August 1944, Anna, her family and other people who were hiding from the German occupation forces were captured and sent to prisons and concentration camps. Anna died of typhus at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but her posthumously published diaries made her a symbol of all the Jews who died in World War II.
10. The arrival of Jews from Carpathian Rus, a region that in 1939 was ceded to Hungary, and before that belonged to Czechoslovakia, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp in Poland, in May 1944. The photograph was provided by Lily Jacob in 1980.
11. Fourteen-year-old Cheslava Kvoka, photographs of the personal file of a prisoner in the Auschwitz camp. The photo is in the museum of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people died during World War II, most of them Jews. Czeslawa, a Polish and Catholic, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, Poland, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother in December 1942. Three months later, both were already dead. Wilhelm Brasse, one of the prisoners whose job was to take photographs of the prisoners, spoke about Czeslaw in a documentary filmed in 2005. “She was so young and she was so scared. The poor girl did not understand why she was there, and she could not understand what exactly they were saying to her. The matron got angry, took a stick and started to beat her in the face. This German woman just took out her aggression on the girl. This young girl was so beautiful, so innocent. She was crying, but there was nothing she could do. Before I photographed her, she wiped tears and blood from a cut on her lip. Unfortunately, I couldn't help her."
12. A victim of a Nazi medical experiment in Ravensbrück, Germany, in November 1943. A deep phosphorus burn is visible on the victim's arm. The photo shows the results of a medical experiment with phosphorus, which was carried out by the doctors of Ravensbrück. During the experiment, a mixture of phosphorus and rubber is applied to the skin and set on fire. Twenty seconds later, the fire was extinguished with water. Three days later, the wound was treated with Echinacin solution. After two weeks, the wound healed. This photograph, taken by a camp doctor, was present as evidence of Nazi atrocities during the trial of doctors in Nuremberg.
13. Jewish prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp, after being released from the camp in 1945
14. American soldiers silently inspect railway cars with dead bodies that were found on a railway line at the Dachau camp in Germany, May 3, 1945.
15. An emaciated Frenchman sits among the dead at the Mittelbau-Dora labor camp in Nordhausen, Germany, in April 1945.
16. Dead bodies lie against the wall of the crematorium in the German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The bodies were discovered by American Seventh Army troops who captured the camp on May 14, 1945.
17. An American soldier inspects thousands of gold wedding rings that were seized from Jews by the Germans in Salt Heilbronn in Germany, May 3, 1945.
18. Three American soldiers look at dead bodies in an oven in a crematorium in April 1945. The photograph was taken in an unidentified concentration camp in Germany, as the camp was liberated by US Army soldiers.
19. A pile of ashes and bones in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar in Germany, April 25, 1945.
20. Prisoners at the electric fence of the Dachau concentration camp greet American soldiers. The exact date of the photo is not known. Some of the prisoners are wearing blue and white striped prison clothes. They decorated their barracks with secretly made flags that they had made when they heard the approaching volleys of guns from the 42nd Raduga Division as they approached Dachau.
21. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American officers at the Ohrdruf concentration camp, shortly after the camp was liberated in April 1945. When American troops were in close proximity to the camp, the guards shot the prisoners.
22. A dying prisoner in the Nordhausen concentration camp in Germany on April 18, 1945.
23. Prisoners on the death march from Dachau move south along the street Noerdliche Muenchner in Grunwald, Germany, April 29, 1945. Many thousands of prisoners were forcibly transferred from remote POW camps to camps deep in German territory when Allied troops were on the outskirts of the borders. Thousands of people died along the way, those who were unable to keep up were executed on the spot. Fourth from the right in the photo is Dmitry Gorky, who was born on August 19, 1920 in Blagoslovsky, Russia, to a peasant family. During World War II, Dmitry was imprisoned in a prison in Dachau for 22 months. The reasons for his imprisonment are unknown. Photo courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
24. American soldiers walk between the rows of corpses that lie on the ground near the barracks in the Nazi concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany, April 17, 1945. The camp is located 70 miles west of Leipzig. When the camp was liberated by Allied forces on April 12, US Army soldiers discovered more than 3,000 bodies, and a pitiful handful of survivors.
25. A dead prisoner in a train carriage near the Dachau concentration camp in May 1945.
26. Lieutenant General George S. Patton of the 3rd Army, XX Corps of the Allied Army in a concentration camp in Buchenwald near Weimar, Germany, April 11, 1945.
27. General Patch's 12th Armored Division, making its way to the Austrian border, stumbled upon the horrors of the German concentration camp at Schwabmunchen, southwest of Munich. Over 4,000 slaves, Jews from various countries, were placed in the prison. Many prisoners were burned alive by the guards, who set fire to the barracks where the prisoners slept, shooting at anyone who tried to escape. The photograph of dead bodies in Schwabmunchen was taken on May 1, 1945.
28. The body of a prisoner lies on a barbed wire fence in Leipzig-Tekla, south of the Buchenwald camp, near Weimar, Germany.
29. These dead bodies of German victims were removed from the Lambach concentration camp in Austria on May 6, 1945 by German soldiers on the orders of American troops. The camp initially housed eighteen thousand people. No beds or bathroom facilities were provided; forty to fifty prisoners died every day.
30. A young man sits on an overturned stool next to a cremated body at the Thekla camp outside Leipzig, in April 1945, after American troops entered Leipzig on April 18. On this day, April 18, the workers of the Fekla aircraft factory were locked in an isolated room and burned alive by incendiary bombs. About 300 prisoners died. Those who managed to escape were executed by members of the Hitler Youth, according to a report by an American captain.
31. Burnt bodies of political prisoners lie at the entrance to a barn in Gardelegen, Germany, on April 16, 1945, where they met their death at the hands of German SS troops who set fire to the barn. A group of people tried to escape and were shot by the SS troops. Of the 1,100 prisoners, only twelve managed to escape.
32. Dead bodies found by soldiers of the US Army's 3rd Armored Division in a German concentration camp at Nordhausen on April 25, 1945, where hundreds of "slaves" of various nationalities were kept.
33. When American troops liberated prisoners at the Dachau camp, Germany, in 1945, many German guards were killed by the prisoners, who then threw their bodies into the ditch surrounding the camp.
34. Lieutenant Colonel Ed Seiler of Louisville, Kentucky, stands among the bodies of Holocaust victims, talking to 200 German civilians who were brought to the Landsberg concentration camp, May 15, 1945
35. Exhausted and emaciated prisoners, almost dead from hunger, in a concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria, May 7, 1945. The camp enjoyed a reputation as a place. where prisoners were used for "scientific" experiments.
36. A Russian liberated by soldiers of the 3rd Panzer Division of the US First Army points to a former camp guard who brutally beat prisoners on April 14, 1945 at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia, Germany.
37. Dead bodies in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. British soldiers found 60,000 men, women and children dying of hunger and disease.
38. Soldiers of the German SS troops load the bodies of victims - prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp - into trucks for burial, in Belsen, Germany, April 17, 1945. In the background is a British armed convoy.
39. Citizens of Ludwigslust, Germany, inspect nearby concentration camps on the orders of the 82nd Airborne Division on May 6, 1945.
40. Thousands of dead bodies in Bergen-Belsen, in Bergen, Germany, found after the camp was liberated by British troops on April 20, 1945. About 60,000 civilians held here, victims of typhus, typhoid and dysentery, died by the hundreds every day, despite the desperate efforts of medical personnel hurriedly transferred to the camp after its liberation.
41. Joseph Kramer, commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Belsen, photograph was taken on April 28, 1945. After the trial, Kramer, "The Beast of Belsen", was convicted and executed in December 1945.
42. SS women unload the bodies of their victims from trucks in a concentration camp in Belsen, Germany, April 28, 1945. Hunger and disease led to the death of hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the camp. British soldiers are in the background.
43. German SS soldier among hundreds of corpses during a mass grave in Belsen, Germany, in April 1945.
44. Piles of dead bodies in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, April 30, 1945. Approximately 100,000 people died in this camp.
45. A German woman closes her son's eyes as they walk past a row of exhumed bodies outside Suttrop, Germany. The bodies of 57 Russians killed by German SS troops were thrown into a mass grave before the arrival of the US Ninth Army. Before the burial, the entire German civilian population in the area was gathered to see the victims with their own eyes.
Anti-Semitism is a shameful phenomenon. Actually, any oppression and even more so the physical destruction of people on a national basis is criminal, especially if it is initiated by the government and carried out on a national scale. History knows cases of mass genocide against representatives of different peoples. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were destroyed by the Turks at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Not everyone knows how cruelly Japanese soldiers dealt with the Chinese during the occupation of Nanjing and Singapore in the late 30s. Mass executions were carried out during the war by the allies of Nazi Germany, the Croatian Ustaše. By historical standards, recently, in 1994, terrible purges along ethnic lines (Hutus were killed by Tutsis) shocked Rwanda.
But there is a people who have been subjected to the most intense ethnic persecution in the twentieth century, known as the Holocaust. Modern Germans cannot unequivocally explain why their grandfathers, who grew up under the influence of Goebbels' propaganda, exterminated the Jews. It is possible that the ancestors themselves would not have found a clear argument for their actions, but in the thirties and forties, in most cases, everything was clear and understandable for them.
Woe from the mind?
When asked why the Jews were exterminated in different countries (and this happened not only in Germany of the twentieth century, but also in other countries at different times), one can most often hear the answer from representatives of this people: “Out of envy!” This version of the assessment of tragic events has its own logic and truth. The Jewish people gave mankind many geniuses who shone in science, in art, and in other areas of human civilization. The ability to adapt, a traditionally active position, an active character, subtle and ironic humor, innate musicality, enterprise and other unconditionally positive qualities are characteristic of the nation that gave the world Einstein, Oistrakh, Marx, Botvinnik ... Yes, you can list for a long time who else. But, apparently, it's not just envy of outstanding mental abilities. After all, not all Jews are Einsteins. There are people among them and simpler. The sign of true wisdom is not its constant demonstration, but something else. For example, the ability to provide a friendly environment. Such that it would never occur to anyone to offend the representatives of this people. Not out of fear, but out of respect. Or even love.
Revolutionary money grab
People of different nationalities strive for power and wealth. Anyone who truly wants to taste these attributes of an earthly paradise is looking for ways to achieve his goal and sometimes finds them. Then other people (who can be conditionally called envious) have a desire to redistribute the benefits, in other words, take away the values from the rich and appropriate them, or at least share them equally (or fraternally, this is when the eldest has more). During pogroms and revolutions, successful owners of fortunes of different nationalities, from Zulu kings to Ukrainian high government officials, fall under the scrutiny. But why were the Jews exterminated in the first place in almost all cases of mass robbery? Maybe they have more money?
Aliens and xenophobes
Jews for historical reasons from ancient times until the middle of the twentieth century did not have their own state. They had to settle in different countries, kingdoms, states and move to new places in search of a better life. Some of the Jews were able to assimilate, merging into the indigenous ethnic group and dissolving into it without a trace. But the core of the nation still retained its identity, religion, language and other features that define national characteristics. In itself, this is a miracle, because xenophobia is inherent in one way or another in almost all indigenous ethnic groups. Otherness causes rejection and hostility, and they, in turn, greatly complicate life.
Knowing that the best reason for uniting the nation could be a common enemy, Hitler exterminated the Jews. Technically, it was simple, they were easy to recognize, they go to synagogues, keep kosher and Sabbath, dress differently and sometimes even speak with an accent. In addition, at the time the Nazis came to power, the Jews did not have the opportunity to effectively resist violence, representing an almost ideal ethnically isolated and helpless victim. The desire for self-isolation, which determined the survival of the nation, once again worked as a bait for the rioters.
Hitler's "My Struggle"
Did the Germans know about Auschwitz and Buchenwald
After the defeat of Nazism, many Germans claimed they knew nothing about concentration camps, ghettos, high-performance crematorium ovens, and gigantic ditches filled with human bodies. They did not know about soap, and candles made from human fat, and other cases of "useful disposal" of the remains. Some of their neighbors simply disappeared somewhere, and the authorities did not hear about the atrocities committed in the occupied territories. The desire to disown responsibility for war crimes of ordinary soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht is understandable; they pointed to the SS troops, which were mainly engaged in punitive operations. But there was also the “Kristallnacht” of 1938, during which not only attack aircraft in brown shirts acted, but also the most ordinary inhabitants. Representatives of the sentimental, talented and industrious German people with sweet ecstasy destroyed the property of their recent friends and neighbors, and they themselves were beaten and humiliated. So why did the Germans exterminate the Jews, what are the reasons for the sudden outbreak of fierce hatred? Were there any reasons?
Jews of the Weimar Republic
To understand the reasons why the Germans, their recent neighbors and friends exterminated the Jews, one should plunge into the atmosphere of the Weimar Republic. Many historical studies have been written about this period, and those who do not want to read scientific tomes have the opportunity to learn about it from the novels of the great writer E. M. Remarque. The country suffers from unbearable indemnities imposed by the Entente countries that won the Great War. Poverty borders on hunger, while the souls of its citizens are increasingly seized by various vices caused by forced idleness and the desire to somehow brighten up their gray beggarly life. But there are also successful people, businessmen, bankers, speculators. Entrepreneurship, due to centuries of nomadic life, is in the blood of the Jews. It was they who became the backbone of the business elite of the Weimar Republic, which existed from 1919 to There were, of course, poor Jews, craftsmen, working artisans, musicians and poets, artists and sculptors, and they made up the majority of the people. They basically became victims of the Holocaust, the rich managed to escape, they had money for tickets.
The Holocaust reached its peak during World War II. On the territory of occupied Poland, the “death factories”, Majdanek and Auschwitz immediately began to work. But the flywheel of mass murder on a national basis gained special momentum after the Wehrmacht invaded the USSR.
There were many Jews in the Leninist Politburo of the Bolshevik Party, they even made up the majority. By 1941, large-scale purges took place in the CPSU(b), as a result of which the national composition of the Kremlin leadership underwent significant changes. But at the grassroots (as they say, "on the ground") levels and in the organs of the NKVD, the Jewish Bolsheviks still retained quantitative dominance. Many of them had experience of the Civil War, their merits before the Soviet government were assessed as indisputable, they participated in other large-scale Bolshevik projects. Is it worth asking why Hitler exterminated Jews and commissars in the occupied Soviet territories in the first place? For the Nazis, these two concepts were practically identical and eventually merged into a single whole definition of "Jewish Commissar".
Anti-Semitism Vaccine
National hostility was inculcated gradually. Racial theory came to dominate almost immediately after the Nazis came to power. On the screens of cinemas appeared chronicles of ritual sacrifices, during which rabbis killed cows by cutting their throats with a sharp knife. and women are very beautiful, but the Nazi propagandists were not interested in such. For propaganda videos and posters, "walking manuals for anti-Semites" were specially chosen, with faces expressing brutal cruelty and stupidity. So the Germans became anti-Semites.
After the Victory, the commandant's offices of the victorious countries pursued a policy of denazification, and in all four occupation zones: Soviet, American, French and British. The inhabitants of the defeated Reich were actually forced (under the threat of deprivation of food rations) to watch revealing documentaries. This measure was aimed at leveling the consequences of twelve years of brainwashing of deceived Germans.
Himself like that!
Talking about geopolitics, preaching the ideals of the racial superiority of the Aryans and calling for the destruction of peoples, the Fuhrer nevertheless remained, paradoxically, an ordinary person who suffered from a number of psychological complexes. One of them was the question of one's own nationality. It is difficult to figure out why Hitler exterminated the Jews, but one of the clues may be the origin of his father, Alois Schicklgruber. The father of the future Fuhrer received the infamous surname only after an official statement of paternity, certified by three witnesses and made by Johann Georg Hitler in 1867, for reasons of inheritance.
Alois himself was married three times, and there is a version that one of his children from a previous marriage tried to blackmail the "leader of the German people" with information about the semi-Jewish origin of their common father. This hypothesis has a number of inconsistencies, but due to chronological remoteness it cannot be completely ruled out. But she can explain some of the subtleties of the morbid psyche of the demon-possessed Fuhrer. After all, an anti-Semitic Jew is not such a rare occurrence. And Hitler's appearance does not at all correspond to the racial standards adopted in the Third Reich. He was not a tall blue-eyed blond.
Occult and other causes
It is also possible to try to explain why Hitler exterminated the Jews from the standpoint of the ethical and philosophical base that he laid under the process of the physical destruction of millions of people. The Fuhrer was fond of occult theories, and his favorite authors were Guido von List and In general, the version of the origin of the Aryans and the ancient Germans turned out to be rather confused and contradictory, but with regard to the Jews, the policy was based on the mystical assumption that they, identified by Hitler as a separate race, supposedly represent danger to all mankind, threatening it with complete annihilation.
It is difficult to assume that an entire nation can be drawn into some kind of global conspiracy. With a multimillion-strong population, someone would surely blabbed about the inhumane plan, in which everyone participates, from the shoemaker Rabinovich to Professor Geller. There is no logically substantiated answer to the question of why the Nazis exterminated the Jews.
Military is committed when people refuse to think for themselves, relying on their leaders, and without a doubt, and sometimes with pleasure, carry out someone's evil will. Unfortunately, things like this still happen today...
Recently, Russian nationalists have again begun to widely disseminate anti-Semitic myths and fakes about the alleged "salvation" of Jews during the Second World War.
This is a lie from beginning to end - in 1941-1945. 60% of the Jewish population of the USSR was destroyed - almost 3 million Jews, and in the occupied territories the Jewish population was destroyed almost without exception - 97%
see Holocaust in Russia
There was no genocide of the Jewish people on such a scale in any of the countries occupied by the Nazis. In contrast, in completely occupied France, the Nazis managed to exterminate only 25% of French Jews. These figures eloquently speak of the "contribution" of the population of the USSR to the extermination of their Jewish fellow citizens.
Another fake that has received the widest distribution in today's Russia is the widespread lie there about the alleged non-participation of Jews in the war.
This brazen lie is easily refuted by facts and documents, testifying to the great contribution to the Victory made by the Jewish citizens of the USSR. This contribution is many times greater than the percentage of Jews in the population of the USSR.
More than 500 thousand Jews fought in the ranks of the Red Army, 167 thousand of them were officers. More than 200 thousand Jewish soldiers and officers died in the battles
I summarized some data about the Jews in the Red Army during the Second World War and this is the picture
During the Second World War, 1 million 685 thousand Jewish soldiers fought in the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition on the Soviet-German front, in Europe, in North Africa, in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, on land, in the sea and in the air. More than 500 thousand Jews fought in the ranks of the Red Army, more than 200 thousand of them died in battle.
Jews in command of the Soviet Army:
Combined arms generals - 92;
aviation generals - 26;
artillery generals - 33;
generals of tank troops - 24;
generals of the communications troops - 7;
generals of technical troops - 5;
generals of the aviation engineering service - 18;
generals of the engineering and artillery service - 15;
generals of the tank engineering service - 9;
generals of the engineering and technical service - 34;
generals of the quartermaster service - 8;
generals of justice - 6;
admirals-engineers - 6.
Jews were:
9 commanders of armies and flotillas,
8 chiefs of staff of fronts, fleets, districts,
12 corps commanders,
64 division commanders of various branches of the military,
52 commanders of tank brigades,
In total, during the war years, 305 Jews served in the armed forces of the country with the rank of generals and admirals, 219 of them (71.8 percent) took a direct part in the hostilities, 38 died ...
Jewish commanders of units and formations of the Soviet Air Force in the Second World War:
Lieutenant General of Aviation twice GSS Ya. Smushkevich - Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army Air Force in 40-41 (shot in November 1941)
Lieutenant General of Aviation GSS M. Shevelev - Chief of Staff of Long-Range Aviation
General-Major of Aviation of the GSS Z. Pomerantsev - Deputy Comm. Front Air Force
Lieutenant General of Aviation GSS A. Rafalovich - Commander of the Air Force of the Army
Major General of Aviation B. Pisarevsky - Commander of the Army Air Force
Lieutenant General of the GSS Aviation A. Zlatotsvetov (Goldfarb) - commander of the 1st Guards.
mixed air corps
Colonel GSS Yu. Berkal - commander of the 282nd Fighter Aviation Division
colonel GSS I. Udonin - commander of the 261st mixed aviation division
sub-nick GSS Khaim Yankelevich Khashper - commander of the 7th Guards assault aviation regiment
Major R. Lyakhovsky - Commander of the 75th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment
under-nick A. Tseygin-commander of the 16th Guards Long-Range Aviation Regiment
sub-nick GSS Ya. Kutikhin - commander of the 156th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment
major Yankovsky - commander of the 7th Fighter Aviation Regiment
p / p-k Nihamkin - commander of the 43rd Fighter Aviation Regiment
Major Dankevich - Commander of the 347th Fighter Aviation Regiment
Captain Pozdnyakov Yakov Mironovich - commander of the 513th Fighter Aviation Regiment
major Plotkin - commander of the 486th attack air regiment
Major Swirs - Commander of the 567th Attack Aviation Regiment
p / p-k Flying Israel Yakovlevich - commander of 646 night scorers. air regiment
Major Shulyakov Grigory Iosifovich - commander of 989 night scorers. air regiment
major Mogilevsky - commander of the 40th bomber regiment
major Yakobson - commander of the 99th bomber regiment
p / p-k Berman - commander of the 511th separate reconnaissance aviation regiment
regiment. Goberman - commander of the 6th air defense regiment
Jewish commanders in the Red Army cavalry in WWII:
Major General Tsetlin - commander of the cavalry corps
Major General Borisov (Shister) - Chief of Staff of the Cavalry Corps
Colonel Dobrushin - Deputy Commander of the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps
Colonel Demchuk David Semenovich - commander of the 9th Guards Cavalry Division.
Colonel Roytenberg - commander of the 37th cavalry division
Colonel Moskalik Mikhail Emmanuilovich - commander of the 75th cavalry division
Colonel Popov Khaim Abramovich - 31st Guards Cavalry Regiment
Mr. Nidelevich - Kr 37 Guards Cavalry Regiment
P-K Factor - K-r 170 cavalry regiment.
Jewish commanders of units and formations of the Soviet armored forces in the Second World War:
General Lieutenant Binovich. - Commander of an armored tank. and mechanized troops of the 2nd
Ukrainian front
Major General Rabinovich - Commander of the Armored Troops
2nd Belorussian Front
Lieutenant General Chernyavsky - Commander of the Armored Troops
2nd Baltic Front
General Lieutenant Hasin - Commander of the Armored Troops
Leningrad Front
Major General Raikin - Commander of the Armored Troops
4th Ukrainian Front
General-Major Preisman - Head of Armored Tank Directorate
Northwestern Front
Major General Eht - Deputy. commander of armored troops
3rd Ukrainian Front
Major General I.S.Zaltsman - People's Commissar for the Tank Industry (1942-43)
Colonel General Zh.Ya.Kotin - tank designer, deputy people's commissar of the tank industry (1941-43)
General Lieutenant Weinrub - Commander of the Armored Troops of the 8th Guards Army
Major General Suprian - commander of the armored forces of the army
Major General Schneider - commander of an armored tank. and fur. army troops
regiment. Vishman - Commander of the Armored Troops of the 37th Army
Major General Safir - commander of an armored tank. and fur. army troops
Lieutenant General Krivoshein - commander of the 1st mechanized corps
Major General Khasin Abram Matveevich - commander of the 2nd mech. corps
Major General Khatskilevich - commander of the 6th mechanized corps
regiment. Bibergal - Chief of Staff of the 1st Tank Corps
Major General Dukhovny - Chief of Staff of the Tank Corps
Major General Kreizer Yakov Grigorievich - commander of the 1st Panzer Division
regiment. Temnik - commander of the 21st Guards. fur. brigades
regiment. Kremer - commander of the 8th Guards. fur. brigades
p / Colonel Egudkin - commander of 16 mech. brigades
p / colonel Livshits - commander of 19 mech. brigades
p / Colonel Goldberg - commander of the 55 mech. brigades
regiment. Shpiller - commander of the 3rd Guards. tank. brigades
p / Colonel Mindlin - commander of the 1st Guards. tank. brigades
regiment. Krichman - commander of the 6th Guards. tank. brigades
Major Pechkovsky - commander of the 14th Guards. tank. brigades
regiment. Klinfeld - commander of the 25th Guards. tank. brigades
regiment. Dragunsky - commander of the 55th Guards. tank. brigades
regiment. Cheryapkin - commander of the 50th Guards. tank. brigades
regiment. Butman-Doroshkevich - commander of the 10th tank. brigades
regiment. Lieberman - commander of the 50th tank. brigades
p / Colonel Kochergin - commander of the 78th tank. brigades
regiment. Secunda is the commander of the 95th tank. brigades
regiment. Vishman - commander of the 110th tank. brigades
regiment. Oscotsky - commander of 152 tanks. brigades
p / Colonel Levi - commander of 195 tank. brigades
regiment. Kirnos Avraam Solomonovich - commander of the 12th tank. brigades
Major Kaufman Shaya Shmerkovich - commander of the 17th tank. brigades
p / p-to Golant Ovsey Iosifovich - commander of the 24th tank. brigades
regiment. Rabinovich Leonid Yudelevich - commander of the 47th tank. brigades
p / p-k Paykin Zalman Grigorievich - commander of the 98th tank. brigades
p / p-to Gorodetsky Moisei Isaakovich - commander of the 99th tank. brigades
p / p-k Aizenberg Isaak Ilyich - commander of the 110th tank. brigades
regiment. Granovsky Isaak Naumovich - commander of the 111th tank. brigades
p / c Dvorkin Boris Lvovich - commander of the 154th tank. brigades
p / p-to Motskin Yakov Lvovich - commander of the 166th tank. brigades
Major Golzer Munya Yakovlevich - commander of the 191st tank. brigades
p / p-to Dukhovny Efim Evseevich - commander of the 196th tank. brigades
p / p-k Vainrub Evsey Grigorievich - commander of the 206th tank. brigades
regiment. Shulkin Lev Moiseevich - early. intelligence of the 3rd Guards. tank army
p / p-k Goldberg - commander of the 55th Guards. tank regiment
Jewish infantry commanders in WWII:
gene. Army Kreiser - Commander of the 2nd Guards. army
Colonel General Shtern - Commander of the Far Eastern Front
Major General Gorodinsky - Army Commander
gen.-leit. Dashevsky - army commander
gen.-leit. Skvirsky - commander of the 26th army
Major General Katsnelson - early. Headquarters of the Kalinin Front
Major General Stelmakh - early. Headquarters of the Leningrad Front
gen.-leit. Belkin - early counterintelligence department SMERSH of the Baltic Front
gen.-leit. Rubin - head of intelligence of the Southwestern Front
Major General Sorkin - Head of Intelligence of the Far Eastern Front
Major General Beilin - early. headquarters of the 3rd Shock Army
Major General Birman - early. headquarters of the 12th army
Major General Berezinsky - early. headquarters of the 42nd army
Major General Bragin - early. headquarters of the 32nd army
Major General Golovchiner - early. headquarters of the 8th army
Major General Markushevich - early. headquarters of the 19th army
gen.-leit. Rogachevsky - beginning. headquarters of the 28th army
gen.-leit. Rogozny - beginning. headquarters of the 40th army
Major General Siminovsky - early. headquarters of the 39th army
Major General Sosedov - early. headquarters of the 10th Guards. armies
gen.-leit. Andreev - commander of the 43rd rifle corps
major general Babich - commander of the rifle corps
regiment. Blank - commander of the 15th Rifle Corps
major general Khmelnitsky - commander of the rifle corps
Major General Shteinman - Commander of the Rifle Corps
p / regiment. Portnov - commander of the 1st Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Levin - commander of the 4th Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Moretsky - commander of the 7th Guards Rifle Division
p / regiment Klebansky - commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division
Major General Shafarenko - Commander of the 23rd Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Maksimovich - commander of the 34th Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Smolin - commander of the 35th Guards Rifle Division
p / regiment. Shtrigol - Commander of the 39th Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Bransburg - Commander of the 40th Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Levin - commander of the 96th Guards Rifle Division
regiment. Kreizer - Commander of the 1st Moscow Rifle Division
regiment. Grossman - commander of the 25th Infantry Division
regiment. Yankovsky - commander of the 30th Infantry Division
regiment. Steiger - Commander of the 32nd Rifle Division
regiment. Vasilevsky - commander of the 53rd Infantry Division
regiment. Levin - commander of the 62nd Infantry Division
regiment. Bobovich - commander of the 67th Infantry Division
regiment. Lebedinsky - commander of the 85th Infantry Division
regiment. Blank - Commander of the 87th Rifle Division
regiment. Tsukarev - commander of the 97th Infantry Division
regiment. Sorokin - commander of the 126th Infantry Division
regiment. Gershevich - commander of the 161st Infantry Division
Major General Rogachevsky - commander of the 169th Infantry Division
regiment. Tsyplenkov - commander of the 170th Infantry Division
p / regiment. Gorelik - commander of the 174th Infantry Division
Major General Kronik - Commander of the 178th Rifle Division
regiment. Maloshitsky - commander of the 180th Infantry Division
regiment. Shekhtman - commander of the 185th Infantry Division
regiment. Melder - Commander of the 200 Infantry Division
regiment. Makhlinovsky - commander of the 211th rifle division
regiment. Roitenberg - commander of the 216th rifle division
regiment. Birstein - Commander of the 251st Rifle Division
p / regiment. Levin - commander of the 258 Infantry Division
regiment. Gorshenin - commander of the 260th Infantry Division
Major General Fishman - Commander of the 263rd Rifle Division
p / regiment. Shafarenko - commander of the 2nd airborne brigade
p / regiment. Stein - Commander of the 6th Airborne Brigade
p / regiment. Vilshansky - Commander of the 8th Separate Marine Brigade
regiment. Lyaskin - Commander of the 62nd Marine Brigade
Jews - Heroes of the Soviet Union
The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to 157 Jewish soldiers, three Jews - Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force of the Red Army, Lieutenant General Smushkevich, Colonel General. tank. Troops Dragoon and Marshal armored. Katukov troops - received this title twice, 14 more became full holders of the Order of Glory, which was equated to the title of Hero. In terms of one hundred thousand Jewish population, 6.83 Heroes are obtained. Only the Russians are ahead - 7.66 Heroes per hundred thousand, then, after the Jews, Ukrainians go - 5.88 and Belarusians - 4.19.
In total, the title of Hero was posthumously awarded to 45 Jewish soldiers, that is, almost a third of those awarded this title, eight more died, having already become Heroes in the course of further battles.
The Jewish heroes were distributed as follows:
private and non-commissioned officers - 39,
junior officers - 71,
senior officers - 33,
generals - 6
and one civilian - the secretary of the Minsk underground city committee of the CPSU, the head of the sabotage group I. Kazinets. On March 27, 1942, he was captured by the Gestapo. Shooting back, he killed two fascists and wounded three. He was tortured for a long time, his eyes were gouged out, but he did not betray anyone or anything. On May 7, Isai Kazinets was hanged in the city square. The title of Hero was awarded to him ... May 8, 1965.
http://ilsys.net/Alex_N_Studio/hero/list.asp
According to the types of troops, the alignment of the Jewish Heroes is as follows:
infantrymen - 36,
artillerymen and mortarmen - 38,
pilots - 28,
tankers - 21,
political workers - 12,
sappers - 7,
sailors - 6,
signalmen - 1,
underground workers - 1.
Of the 157 - exactly two-thirds (106 people) came from working-class families, 12 - from peasants, the rest, as they say, commoners. Among the Heroes, there is one orphanage, a village teacher and even an artist, a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR
The awarding of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Jews was associated with various anti-Semitic discriminatory restrictions.
Many Jews did not receive high awards only because of the anti-Semitic policy of the Soviet authorities.
So, during the war years, Matrosov’s feat was repeated by four Jews, and ordinary Abram Levin lay down on the embrasure a year before Matrosov, on February 22, 1942, during the liberation of the Kalinin region (he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree posthumously ... after 15 years), and the sergeant Tovye Rise managed to stay alive, although he received 18 wounds, and was awarded the Order of Glory III degree.
14 Jewish pilots accomplished the feat by directing their wrecked aircraft at a concentration of enemy troops:
Isaak Zinovievich Preisaizen,
Isaak Moiseevich Betsis,
Isaac Abramovich Irzhak,
Zinovy Abramovich Levitsky,
Isaak Davydovich Shvartsman,
Ilya Borisovich Katunin,
Israel Kapelevich,
Victor Chernyavsky and others.
The title of Hero was awarded only to two - I. Katunin, obviously, due to the ambiguity of the nationality of his surname and Shik Kordonsky - only in 1990 (!) Year, although the entire squadron was witness to his feat on September 28, 1943.
Jewish pilots who committed aerial ramming
Among all types of air combat during the Second World War
the most mysterious and exciting is the air ram.
Asin Vladimir Naumovich, senior lieutenant, and Beletsky Abram Isaakovich, major of the guard, were seriously wounded during ramming, and each of them lost both legs. After the hospital, they returned to service and fought until the Victory.
Binov Lev Isaakovich, Major of the 512th Fighter Aviation Regiment. September 19, 1942 on the outskirts of Stalingrad rammed a German fighter plane. On his damaged aircraft, wounded, he landed. After being cured, he continued to fly and died in an air battle in January 1943.
Butman Ion Vladimirovich in January 1942 on the Karelian front shot down a German plane with a ram attack.
Hetman Naum Froimovich, senior lieutenant, ship commander of the 752nd long-range bomber regiment, on November 5, 1941, on the outskirts of Moscow, rammed a German fighter plane.
Grul Simkha Grigoryevich - junior lieutenant. On October 9, 1941, in the sky near Moscow, he shot down an enemy plane with a ram attack,
Krivoshein Sergey Mikhailovich, junior lieutenant, flight commander
126 Fighter Aviation Regiment, born in 1921 on August 6
1941 on the Central Front was rammed by a German bomber. Landed by parachute. September 2, 1942 did not return from a combat mission. Sergei is the nephew of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Krivoshein Semyon Moiseevich.
Levin Abram Georgievich, sejeant. Pilot of the 11th Fighter Aviation Regiment, born in 1920 in Roshal, Moscow Region. On December 4, 1941, a German bomber rammed on the outskirts of Moscow and died.
Novorozhkin Samuil Izrailevich junior lieutenant, pilot-observer in 1942. participated in the battle as part of the crew of the spotter P.I. Zhilinsky, who rammed one of the 5 German fighter planes that attacked him. Thrown out of the plane, the wounded landed on a parachute.
Radicher Lev Sergeevich, pilot of the 728th Fighter Aviation Regiment, was born in 1923 in the village. Obukhovo Moscow region On August 23, 1943, on the approaches to the city of Chuguev, he was rammed by a German fighter and died.
Tabatadze Moses Efimovich, junior lieutenant. Pilot of the 160th Fighter Aviation Regiment, born in 1921 in Borjomi (Georgia). July 9, 1941 in the Smolensk sky rammed an enemy plane and died.
Ushatsky Lev Vulfovich; junior lieutenant, deputy squadron commander of the 926th Fighter Aviation Regiment, was born in 1916 in Petrograd. September 17, 1943 at the station. Bologoe, Kalinin region, was rammed by a German bomber.
Chagall Anatoly Ionovich; senior sergeant, pilot of the 34th Fighter Aviation Regiment, born in 1921 in Makedonovo, Kalinin Region, on August 4, 1943, a German bomber rammed at the distant approaches to Moscow.
Shimanchik Lev Leonidovich, foreman, pilot of the 164th Fighter Aviation Regiment, was born in 1922 in Minsk. In April 1943, a German reconnaissance aircraft rammed on the Western Front. The injured pilot landed on the damaged plane.
A hero was not given to any Jewish pilot who committed an aerial ramming! Let me remind you that Viktor Talalikhin, who rammed a German plane in the sky near Moscow on August 7, 1941, was awarded the title of Hero literally the very next day.
The shameful fact of Soviet state anti-Semitism was the deprivation of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union of 6 Jews.
Departure for permanent residence in Israel led to the deprivation of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the deprivation of all military awards from four Jews: V. Vilenkis, M. Grabsky, M. Felsenstein and K. Shuras.
As part of the anti-Semitic campaign for the "fight against cosmopolitanism" in 1953, Hero of the Soviet Union Lev Gitman was slandered and sentenced to ten years in the camps and deprivation of all government awards "for theft of state property, namely, scraps of sheet metal for a total of 8 rubles 67 kopecks »
Hero of the Soviet Union Yefim Lev was stripped of all his military decorations in 1961. At that time, well-known trials for so-called "economic crimes" were going on in the USSR. Most of the accused in these trials were Jews. Many of them received death sentences.
12 Jewish soldiers were awarded Orders of Glory of all three degrees. These soldier orders were awarded for personal deeds and heroism. Here are their names: Leonid Davidovich Blat, Grigory Abramovich Bogorad, Semyon Meerovich Burman, Nikolai Lazarevich Gizis, Lev Davidovich Globus, Boris Naumovich Zamansky, Efim Lvovich Minkin, Vladimir Izrailevich Peller, Eduard Nisinovich Roth, David Markovich Sidler, Shmuel Ziskovich Shapiro, Semyon Elyashevich Schillinger.
Professor of the military academy M.V. Frunze, Colonel Fyodor Sverdlov, in the encyclopedic work "Jewish Warriors on the Fronts of the Great Patriotic War" gives data on the awards of Jews: "According to the Main Directorate of Personnel of the Ministry of Defense, in the most difficult years for the front in 1941 and 1942 (until October 5), they were awarded orders and medals The Union of the SSR has a total of 185,000 soldiers and officers, of which 127,000 are Russians, 33,000 Ukrainians, 5,500 Belarusians, and 5,200 Jews." All statistical calculations are given per 100,000 population. According to the first post-war census, 114 million Russians, 37 million Ukrainians, 7.9 million Belarusians, 2.3 million Jews lived in the country. Of these, about 500 thousand fought in the ranks of the army and navy. Consequently, the author concludes, for 100,000 of the population, Russian soldiers received 111.4 combat awards, Ukrainians - 89.2, Belarusians - 69.7, Jews - most of all - 226.
Further, the author cites, using the same methodology, the calculation of those awarded for the entire period of the war. The result is this: per 100,000 population - Russians - 5.4 thousand, Ukrainians - 4.6 thousand, Belarusians - 3.9 thousand, and Jews - 7 thousand.
That is, by the number of those awarded orders and medals of the USSR, Jewish soldiers took first place
Jews at the head of the Soviet military industry
Colonel General Vannikov Boris Lvovich - People's Commissar for Armaments from 1939 1941, then People's Commissar for Ammunition in 1942-1946.
Ginzburg Semyon Zakharovich - People's Commissar for Construction of the USSR in 1939-1946. During the war years, he supervised the construction of defense and industrial facilities, the commissioning of evacuated enterprises, the restoration
economy in the liberated areas.
Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich - member of the State. Defense Committee, Chairman of the Transport Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, People's Commissar of Railways in 1938-1942. and 1943-1944.
Major General Zaltsman Isaak Moiseevich - Deputy People's Commissar, then People's Commissar of the Tank Industry of the USSR in 1941 - July 1943. Creator and leader
Tankograd, created in Chelyabinsk on the basis of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, evacuated from the Kirov Machine-Building and Kharkov Tank Plants.
Produced more than 1000 tanks per month
Major General Sandler Solomon Mironovich - in 1940-1946. - Deputy People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry.
Major General Vishnevsky David Nikolaevich - DURING THE WAR, deputy. People's Commissar of Munitions. Under his leadership, new types of fuses for shells were developed.
Major General Zalessky Pavel Yakovlevich - in 1940-1950. - Deputy head of the main department of the people's commissariat of the aviation industry. .
Major General Zemlerub Viktor Abramovich - from 1942 to 1946 - Head of the Main Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition.
Lieutenant General Levin Mikhail Aronovich - in 1941-1445 - head of the department of engine building and fuel of the aviation industry.
Major General Nosovsky Naum Emmanuilovich - in 1940-1946. - Head of the Main Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Armaments.
Major General Frankfurt Samuil Grigorievich - in 1942-1946. head of the main department of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition.
Some names of directors of factories that produced weapons, ammunition and equipment for the front:
Major General Bidinsky David Grigorievich - in 1937-1947. director of a number of ammunition factories.
Major General Bykhovsky Abram Isaevich - in 1939-1955. director of the Izhevsk and Perm artillery factories. Izhevsk plant was the main manufacturer of aircraft guns and all types of small arms (machine guns, rifles, anti-tank guns).
Major General Belyansky Alexander Abramovich - in 1942-1947. Director of Aviation Plant No. 18, which manufactured Il-2 attack aircraft.
Major General Gonor Lev Ruvimovich - since 1939 and all the years of the war - director of the Ural Artillery Plant.
Gorsky Boris Lvovich - director of the gunpowder factory,
Major General Zhezlov Mikhail Sergeevich - during the war years - director of an aircraft factory.
Major General Levin Israel Solomonovich - during the war years - director of an aircraft factory in Saratov.
Kotlyar Alexander Solomonovich - Director of the Optical Plant of the People's Commissariat for Armaments.
Kramer Mikhail Pavlovich - director of a metallurgical plant.
Neustroev Semyon Abramovich - director of the ammunition plant.
Major General Polikovsky Vladimir Isaakovich - Head of the Central Research Institute of Aviation Motors.
Major-General Khaim Emmanuilovich Rubinchik - Director of the Krasnoye Sormovo Plant of the People's Commissariat of the Tank Industry.
Sokol Yakov Isaakovich - Director of the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant of Quality Steels
Slavsky Efim Pavlovich - director of the Ural aluminum plant.
Major General Fratkin Boris Abramovich - director of the artillery factory.
Major-General Khazanov Boris Abramovich - Director of the Artillery Plant. Voroshilov.
Shvartsburg Petr Ilyich - director of the Chelyabinsk forging and pressing plant.
Shenkman Matvey Borisovich - director of the aviation plant.
Shifrin Yakov Abramovich - director of the artillery plant.
Eskin Yuliy Borisovich - director of the marine plant.
Below is a part of the names of those who created the production base of the defense industry;
Bernstein Lev Borisovich - head of construction of facilities for the Northern Fleet.
Grenadier David Semenovich - head of the construction of a plant in Siberia.
Dymshits Veniamin Emmanuilovich - builder of metallurgical plants: Kuznetsk, Azovstal, Krivoy Rog, Magnitogorsk. During the war years, he introduced new capacities. Manager of the trust "Magnitostroy".
Sheinkin Boris Lazarevich - head of the construction of an underwater gas pipeline across Lake Ladoga. Then he supervised the construction of an oil pipeline from Guryev to Kuibyshev,
Schildkrot Moses Abramovich - head of the construction of a tank city on the basis of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant.
Major General Rapoport Yakov Davidovich - In 1942-1943. - Commander of the 3rd sapper army and defensive construction of a number of fronts. Since 1944, he built the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant.
Bayer Efim Yakovlevich - head of the construction trust. He built a plant for anti-tank rifles and machine guns in Kovrov.
Jews - the creators of military equipment and weapons
Colonel General Kotin Joseph Yakovlevich - under his leadership, modifications of the heavy tank KB (KB-lc, KB-85, new tanks IS-1, IS-2.
Designers of Soviet tanks Chernyak B.A., Mitnik A.Ya., Shpaikhler A.I., Shvartsburg M.B.
Vikhman Yakov Efimovich designed tank diesel engines. A powerful V-2 diesel engine designed by Vikhman was installed on the T-34 tank
Gorlitsky Lev Izrailevich was a designer of self-propelled artillery mounts SAU-76, SAU-122.
Loktev Lev Abramovich - designer of anti-aircraft artillery guns.
Artillery guns ZIS-3 were developed in Grabin's design bureau - they were created by designers-developers: Lasman B., Norkin V., Renne K.
Major General Lavochkin Semyon Alekseevich - General Designer of fighters. Specialists worked with him: Taits M.A., Zaks L.A., Pirlin B.A., Zak S.L., Kantor D.I., Sverdlov I.A., Kheifets N.A., Chernyakov N. S., Eskin Yu.B.
On the La-5 fighter, pilot Ivan Kozhedub shot down 45 enemy aircraft, and on the La-7 fighter - another 17
Nizhny Vladimir Iosifovich - engine specialist. Died in an engine explosion during engine testing.
Mil Mikhail Leontievich - designer, who in the future became an outstanding creator of a number of helicopters.
Gurevich Mikhail Iosifovich - together with Mikoyan A.I. created a series of high-rise fighters - MIG. Major General IAS.
Izakson Alexander Moiseevich - together with Petlyakov V.M. On the eve of the war, he created the Pe-2 dive bomber. After the death of Petlyakov in 1942, he headed the design bureau that created the Pe-2, Pe-3, Pe-8 (TB-7) aircraft. Buyanover SI worked with him. - chief designer of sighting devices for dropping bombs from Pe-2, Vilgrube L.S., Erlikh I.A. and etc.
Kosberg Semyon Arievich - chief designer of aircraft engines.
Kerber Leonid Lvovich - chief designer. Deputy General Designer Tupolev A.N. Prominent designers and engineers worked with him at the Tupolev Design Bureau: Yeger SM., Iosilovich Ts.B., Minkner K.V., Frenkel G.S., Sterlin A.E., Stoman E.K. They created the Tu-2 tactical dive bomber and other aircraft of the Tu family.
Nudelman Alexander Emmanuilovich - designer of aircraft weapons. Chief designer for aircraft guns at the Izhevsk plant. The most popular Yak-9 fighter was equipped with an automatic 37-mm cannon of its design. Together with him, Richter Aron Abramovich designed air guns.
Taubin Yakov Grigorievich - a talented designer of aviation weapons, was repressed in December 1941.
Galperin Anatoly Isaakovich - the designer of a super-heavy aerial bomb weighing 5.4 tons, which was used to destroy especially important and large enemy targets, and others.
For participation in the development and production of new types of military equipment during the war years, 300 Jewish specialists were awarded the Stalin Prize, 12 - the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, 200 - were awarded the Order of Lenin. In total, orders and medals were awarded to 180 thousand Jewish engineers, business leaders and workers.
Among the test pilots, the names of Gallay Mark Lazarevich, Hero of the Soviet Union, Honored Test Pilot of the USSR, are known. Baranovsky Mikhail Lvovich Gimpel E.N., Izgeim A.N., Kantor David Isaakovich, Einis I.V. and others.
Facts of Soviet state anti-Semitism directed against Jewish soldiers
As Lev Kopelev wrote, "already in 1943, secret orders appeared, most often verbal, about the removal of Jewish soldiers from command posts, about reducing the number of Jewish names presented for awards."
Israel Podrabinnik in the study "Jews in the Great Patriotic War" listed some of the feats of the Jews, for which they should have received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but did not.
On June 27, 1941, Isaac Zinovievich Preseizen sent his wrecked plane to a German tank column. In the award list for conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on Preseizen, there is a positive conclusion from the commander of the Western Front. But Preseisen was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War only in 1991.
On January 17, 1944, the squadron commander, captain Isaak Aronovich Irzhak, did the same, but was not awarded. I.P.Zazulinsky, Zinoviy Abramovich Levitsky, B.S.Solomnik (1942-45) who performed the same feat and died were not awarded.
Five Jewish soldiers blew up accumulations of enemy manpower, tanks or a moving tank at the cost of their own lives, tying themselves with anti-tank grenades. Four of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously (G. I. Gardeman, A. M. Zindels, M. I. Ocheret, L. Kh. Papernik), the fifth - V. Rimsky - was awarded the order, the title of Hero was not given to him.
On October 26, 1941, in Minsk, the Nazis hanged underground partisans: the photo shows two men and a girl. The surnames of men are known, the girl was written about as "unknown" for many years. Meanwhile, it has long been known that this is 17-year-old Masha Bruskina, a Jewess, a graduate of the 28th Minsk school.
Masha (Mira Vulfovna) Sinelnikova served in the intelligence of the 43rd Army. She was seized on January 17, tortured evening and night, and shot on the morning of January 18, 1942 in the village of Korchazhkino, Kaluga Region. 25 years after her death, her fate was clarified, preparation of documents began to present her to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but the title was not awarded.
In February 1944, Yury Lazarevich Vater was thrown into the depths of the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky boiler with a sound installation. Wounded three times, he was captured, tortured and executed. The head of the political department of the front, General Shatilo, introduced Vater to the title of Hero, but he was not awarded the title.
The department of junior sergeant Grigory Gershkovich provided the battery commander with communication with his firing positions. Suddenly, during the battle, communication was interrupted, and the guns fell silent. Grigory found a break, grabbed the two ends of the broken cable, clamped it with his teeth. Soon four mines exploded next to him. He died, but he provided communication. For such a feat then awarded the title of Hero. The commander filled out an award sheet for him, but he was not given the title of Hero.
This feat was repeated by signalman Anya Umanskaya. Anya found damage, began to connect the broken wires, but at that time an enemy mine exploded behind her, and Anya was wounded in the back. She continued to squeeze the wires, but when her hands were weak from loss of blood and cold, she clamped the wires between her teeth and held them until help arrived. For this feat, Anya was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree.
Gersh Gechtman, a scout of a rifle regiment, was presented with the title of Hero during the war, he was even announced about it, but he never received the Golden Star. The feat of fighter pilot, senior lieutenant Alexander Gorelik is unparalleled in the history of World War II. In one sortie, with one refueling of ammunition, Gorelik shot down 9 German aircraft. The next day he shot down another bomber, but in this battle he was set on fire and died. Even for this unprecedented example of courage and combat skill, he was not awarded the posthumous title of Hero.
The commander of the reconnaissance group, Lev Grechaninov, was twice presented to the title of Hero, it was on the Stalingrad front, but they were never awarded.
The commander of the submarine, captain of the 3rd rank Isaak Solomonovich Kabo, who at the very beginning of the war torpedoed two German ships, including the large transport Boden, was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. During the war years, he brought the number of destroyed enemy ships to 11, but he was never awarded the title of Hero.
In 1943, Semyon Kruglyak volunteered for the front. Became a scout, went to the enemy's rear, took the "language". Each of his outings could be his last. During the war years, he was twice presented to the title of Hero - he was not awarded.
Roman Markovich Kupershtein twice presented himself for the title of Hero, but he never received this title.
Pilot Lydia Litvak - the record holder among women in the number of downed fascist aircraft, died on August 1, 1943, did not receive the title of Hero.
Aron Nemirovsky, born in Ternivka, Vinnitsa region, fought from 1941 to May 11, 1945, participated in the capture of Prague. On account of his 7 wrecked German tanks, he was wounded 6 times, he was awarded orders 6 times, he was presented to the title of Hero three times, but never received it. Participated in the Victory Parade.
Scout Semyon Melnik, with the help of his detachment, organized all-round defense and ensured the landing of the main forces of the army and the advance of the front. For this feat, the commander promised a Hero, and Melnik was given the Order of the Red Star.
During the Battle of Stalingrad, the pilot, Colonel Lev Ovsishcher, together with his crew, was ordered to fly on a "corn" to the enemy's location and from a low altitude, using loud-speaking equipment, agitate the Germans to stop senseless resistance. The crew of Ovsishcher fulfilled the task of command. His comrades were marked with the title of Hero. They forgot about him.
Five times they were presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union by the commander of the partisan detachment named after. Voroshilov Evgeny Fedorovich Miranovich is the pseudonym of Zhenya Finkelstein.
The commander of the reconnaissance group, Lieutenant Peller Israel Isaakovich, was presented with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but under a far-fetched pretext, this title was not awarded to him.
Three times Iosif Abramovich Rapoport was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the war.
The soul of the defense of the Brest Fortress was the regimental commissar Efim Moiseevich Fomin - the author of order No. 1. Issued by traitors, he was shot. The fortress became a Hero-Fortress, Fomin did not.
At the beginning of the war, Colonel Shafarenko Pavel Mendelevich formed the 25th Guards Division. In the ranks of the division there were 79 Heroes of the Soviet Union, the division commander in November 1942 received the rank of major general, but the Hero was not assigned to him.