Historical Appendices

A Look at Various Countries in the Context of Rescue

Austria

Austria was historically the ethnic German component of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Following World War I, with the crumbling of the empire, Austria became a separate republic. In March 1938, Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany and became an integral part of it. Most Austrians were agreeable to or even enthusiastic about this "Anschluss" (annexation). Only a small minority maintained opposition to the new regime, organizing in underground movements that encompassed several schools of thought: socialists, communists, Catholics, and conservative patriots. Austrians was considered by Germans to be fully "Aryan" – from the perspective of ideology, race and culture, the Nazis saw them as full partners in the Nazi vision and the Nazi path. Key figures in the upper echelons of the Nazis were Austrian.

Austria quickly began to persecute its Jews, stripping of them their property and distancing them from society, economy and culture. A few days after the annexation, German Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler granted special authority to act outside the law in Austria for the sake of "preserving order and safety," and this became the basis for anti-Jewish activities in Germany as well. A Gestapo center was established in Vienna, and shortly afterwards other centers were created in Austria's major cities. Already in March 1938, Jewish community offices and Zionist institutions were closed in Vienna; and their directors were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. The Gestapo started a campaign of organized robbery of Jewish-owned homes, including confiscating property, artworks, carpets, furniture and other valuables, all of which was transferred to Berlin.

In August 1938 the "Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration" opened, headed by Adolph Eichmann and his assistant Rolf Gunther, which acted by coercion. Emigrating Jews were compelled by bureaucratic edict to forfeit all their property. Most emigration was financed by the levying of surcharges on emigrants and was collected from the property they were forced to declare. All emigration matters were concentrated in Vienna, such that community representatives and individuals seeking emigration documents needed to stay in Vienna and stand in long lines for days and nights in front of the municipal and police buildings, exposed to humiliations and violence. In that period, 185,000 Jews lived in Austria. Until the start of the war on 1 September 1939, 126,000 Jews emigrated from Austria. During the war some of these emigrants were sent to ghettos in Eastern Europe, others successfully reached Western Europe, until October 1941, when emigration was finally outlawed. In 1942, the remainder of Austria's Jews were sent to death camps in Poland.

About one thousand Austrian Jews survived the war. A third of them found hiding places and were assisted by Austrians. There were Austrian citizens, such as Julius Madritsch, Raimond Titsch and Oswald Bosco, who worked to help Jews in other lands occupied by the Germans, Austrians who provided help to Jews transgressed laws that forbade association with Jews and thereby endangered themselves. The punishments for violating these laws included interment in concentration camps, from 1941 being sent to the Russian front as soldiers, and imprisonment in other camps.

Belgium

Until the outbreak of World War II, Belgium was a young country, founded only 100 years prior. On the eve of war, only six percent of Belgium's 70,000 Jews had Belgian citizenship. The Jews, who concentrated in the large cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Liege and Charleroi, were mainly new immigrants who had arrived in the 1920s and '30s, mainly from Poland and other eastern European countries. Most Jews did not belong to the official local Jewish communities, instead forming a number of alternative communities. Many were also not involved in local politics, and were essentially strangers within the society.

The Germans occupied Belgium in May 1940 as part of the plan to conquer the countries of Western Europe. At first Belgium was governed by the occupying military, and toward the end of the war, with the inclination to annex Belgium, a citizen government was declared. Throughout the occupation period, the Belgian governmental apparatus acted under the supervision of those heading government offices. This was done to ensure positions were aligned, such that the actual government was a "mini-government." The King of Belgium, Leopold III, preferred to cooperate with the Germans and even met with Hitler while the Belgian government-in-exile was in London. Between these two ruling authorities there was a disconnect that stemmed from their relationship to German rule. During the deportations to the East, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium twice approached the Germans and intervened on behalf of the Jews. This intervention provided only temporary relief, and only for Belgian Jews, who were a small minority of the Jewish population. With the occupation of Belgium came anti-Jewish decrees, to which Belgian citizens were generally indifferent during this period. There were, however, exceptions to this: The decree distancing Jews from public services and the decree mandating wearing a yellow (May 1942) met with a negative public response.  Formal protests were heard, and some people wore various identifying symbols similar to that of the star. These protests, however, did not bring about a change in German policy.

From the start of the deportations from Belgium in the summer of 1942 and until its liberation in 1944, a change occurred in how Belgian citizens reacted to the Jews' situation. The Belgian government-in-exile in London scarcely expressed an opinion about the distress of the Jews, even when their fate was well-known. The big picture, however, was more complicated. Belgian Jews, both citizens and new immigrants, found many members of the Belgian public willing to participate in underground activities whose purpose was to rescue Jews and help them escape. Some were willing to provide shelter for hunted Jews. Two groups that worked hard to help were the Catholic Church and communist underground groups. The Catholic churches worked mainly in the periphery and the villages, while the communist underground groups were concentrated mainly in the cities, and before the occupation, many Jews had been among their ranks. The struggle of the communist undergrounds was a full-out fight against the occupation, and their face was turned to the future and the composition of postwar Belgium. Helping the communists was a group of Jews who organized themselves in self-defense, and another Jewish defense group that was established in 1942, "The Committee for the Defense of the Jews" (Comite de defence des Juifs). The church groups and communist underground both had leading figures who encouraged their movements to act on behalf of Jews. According to estimates, some 70,000 people were engaged in underground activity. Those who did so risked imprisonment at forced-labor camps. Thanks to widespread support from the general population, more than 25,000 Jews were hidden. They also helped Belgian Jews escape and aided in the transfer of Dutch Jews through Belgium to France and Switzerland. On the eve of World War II, 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium. Of these, 28,902 were murdered in the Holocaust, 44 percent of the Jewish population.

Latvia – Riga

Latvia is a Baltic state bordered by Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania. After the First World War, Latvia declared itself an independent country. The number of Germans among the overall Latvian population was only three percent, but they owned about half the land and held key positions in many parts of the economy. The Germans were the historic conquerors of Latvia from the 13th century, and among other accomplishments built its biggest cities, the largest of which was Riga, which had a German character. When Hitler rose to power, Nazism spread among Latvian Germans, who, due to their influence, created a dependency between their country's economy and that of Germany. These ethnic Germans aspired to have Latvia annexed to Nazi Germany. In June 1940, Russia conquered Latvia and turned it into a Soviet republic within the USSR. On the eve of World War II, there were 94,000 Jews in Latvia, five percent of the overall Latvian population.

In the afternoon of 1 July 1941, the German army conquered Riga, and by 10 July the entire country was occupied; there were no more Soviet forces. Many Latvians enthusiastically received the Germans, because they had liberated them from Soviet rule. The Germans, for their part, entered Latvia with plans to exploit its economy and workforce.

As Germany's conquest neared, Latvians formed militias whose goal was to help the Germans cleanse the country of Soviet traces. In total, about 80,000 men served in the Latvian SS legion, and another 30,000 men were drafted into the Latvian police force and stationed against the Red Army. From the first day of the German occupation, these Latvian militias, whom the Jews called "Di Bandeldika" (Ribbon Wearers), systemically combed through residential areas to arrest Jews. The searches were violent, and in the course of them Jews were murdered and property looted. The cities' synagogues went up in flames with Jews inside them. Due to the situation, Jews tried as much as possible to refrain from walking in the streets. They stayed in their homes, disconnected the doorbells, did not respond to knocks on the door, and sought shelter at the homes of their Latvian friends. Only a few managed to escape.

A few days after the occupation, along with the arrests and house searches, murders of Jews began in the Bikernieku Forest. Jews were subjected to anti-Jewish decrees and many were taken to forced labor. Riga's Jews were concentrated in a ghetto established in the thinly populated suburb of Maskavas. On 25 October 1941, the ghetto was locked with 32,000 inhabitants inside. Conditions in the ghetto were difficult, with terrible overcrowding and a constant shortage of food. Exiting the ghetto was permitted only for work.

In November and December 1941, most of the ghetto's Jews were taken to the Rumbula Forest, where German soldiers and Latvian police units murdered them. Sometimes, the Latvian policemen would carry out the entire mass murder process by themselves. In the Riga ghetto, 5,000 Jews remained. In time, other Jews expelled from elsewhere in the Reich's territory, that is, Germany, were imprisoned in the ghetto as well. From time to time, the Germans would commit mass murder operations of ghetto inhabitants. In November 1943, the Germans liquidated the Riga ghetto and anyone remaining was transferred to work camps.

The Germans strongly forbade Latvians to provide help and aid to the Jews, and the overall Latvian population was either hostile and violent toward the Jews or indifferent to their distress. The Christian Latvians who endangered themselves to help Jews did so against the rules of the German authorities and in spite of the attitudes of the general population toward the Jews.

Upon liberation, about 100 Jewish survivors were recorded in Riga, among whom 42 were saved by Janis Lipke.

Poland

On 1 September 1939, the armies of Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting the Second World War. German Army forces crossed the border with Poland along almost its entire length, with infantry and tanks accompanied by aerial attacks, as German planes bombed Polish army units, the main cities and the fleeing civilian population. In less than a month, all of Poland was conquered by "blitzkrieg" (lightning war), and its citizens became subject to the will of the German occupation. In a secret agreement signed between the USSR and Germany on the eve of war, it was determined that the eastern regions of Poland (slightly less than half of independent Polish land) would be allotted to the USSR. Of the 33 million Polish citizens, a third would be under Soviet governance, and the others – under German occupation. Of the 3.3 million Jews, 2.1 million were under German control. Toward the end of the conquest of Poland, the Nazi government decided to divide its territories in two:

• Territory that would be annexed to the Reich – this included districts in western Poland, some of which had belonged to Germany until World War I and some which had never belonged to Germany, including Lodz, the second-largest city in Poland.
• Territory of the general government – the Generalgouvernement – an area in central Poland, subject to the control of the German government. This area was divided into four districts: Krakow, Warsaw, Radom and Lublin. The entire occupied area was fully controlled and administered by the German authorities and Poles had no real authority there.

With the start of the German occupation, it immediately became clear that the Germans intended to dispossess Poles of their sovereignty. According to doctrines of racial purity, the Poles were considered inferior and were destined to serve the Germans and fulfill their wishes. The Polish elite, which included the priests, intellectuals, academics and public figures, were a distinct target of the occupiers, who undermined any possibility of Poles taking leadership roles. The Germans often used the method of "a deterrent for all to see" in the Polish street, by means of extreme violence, murder and street hangings, with the corpses dangling for several days. The Polish government was exiled to London, where it continued to operate during the war years.

With the start of the occupation, anti-Jewish policies began. The first phase focused on isolating Jews from other Poles and concentrating them in specific areas. To this end, Jews were ordered to wear an identifying symbol on their clothes, and in the two cities with the most Jews, Warsaw and Lodz, ghettos were formed already in the course of 1940. The condition of Polish Jewry under German occupation deteriorated quickly. From the start of the occupation, Jews were conscripted to forced labor, required to wear a yellow star, dispossessed of property, and subjected to many more restrictions in their everyday lives. In 1942, the widespread mass murder of Poland's Jews began. Jews were expelled from the cities, taken to death camps built by the Germans, and murdered. On 22 July 1942, the large expulsion from the Warsaw ghetto began, in the course of which 300,000 Jews were sent to the Treblinka death camp, where they were murdered. For Poles, providing aid and help to Jews carried especially large punishments, including death.

Relations between Jews and Poles were complex. While Catholic Poles and Jews had lived side by side for centuries, Jews suffered from antisemitism, and this persisted during the difficult war years. For example, different underground resistance movements formed in Poland, the most prominent of which was the "Armia Krajowa" (The Home Army), which at its peak had 30,000 members. This organization was known for its antisemitic stance; they did not help Jews during the Holocaust and even harassed them. Nonetheless, Jan Zibinski was himself a member of this underground, and from this underground emerged another organization fully dedicated to helping Jews called "Zegota" – a unique undertaking based on Jewish organizations cooperating with Catholic organizations, and which was responsible for saving hundreds of Jews.

It is difficult to estimate the number of those who were helped by Polish citizens to try and survive. Some three million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Very few survived.

Soviet Union

On the eve of World War II, just over three million Jews lived in the USSR. In 1939-1940, the USSR annexed eastern Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. These areas had an additional almost two million Jews, among which were 250,000-300,000 Jews who had fled from German-occupied Poland. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, there were consequently over five million Jews in areas under Soviet control– more than half of the Jewish population of Europe. Between 1.25 and 1.5 million Jews lived in new areas, that is, outside the "Pale of Settlement" defined from the period of the tsars; of these, 750,000-1,000,000 lived in large cities. This group tended to be younger than the average Soviet Jew and far better educated. A significant portion of these Jews were integrated into the Soviet establishment, its administration, and fields of science. They were also involved in Soviet culture.

Between half a million and a million Jews continued living in towns and in the Jewish agricultural areas that had been promoted by the Soviet government in the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s. On the eve of World War II, there were, therefore, dozens of villages in southern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula in which most or all of the residents were Jewish. The vast majority of these Jews were older and had less formal education than the average Soviet Jewish citizen.

In June 1941, the war began between Nazi Germany and the USSR, in the course of which the Germans conquered Soviet lands. The Germans divided these occupied lands within the USSR into four administrative units, and their borders shifted according to developments on the front. However, this shifting of borders in German-controlled areas was not significant for the Jewish population, who mainly faced the SS and the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads). During preparation for "Operation Barbarossa," orders were given to destroy all the Jews. The total murder of all the Jews in all the lands occupied by the Germans that had been within its borders until 1939 was completed within a matter of weeks, and at most two or three months from the start of occupation.

Very few non-Jews risked their lives to hide Jews. Parts of the population, especially those who had low or middle-class standing in the Soviet mechanism, cooperated with the Germans and actively assisted in the killing of Jews. The response of most of the local population, upon seeing Jews murdered before their eyes, ranged from sympathy for their plight to indifference to gloating at their demise.

The Soviet partisan movements scarcely took measures to save Jews, but rather focused on harming the enemy, blocking transport paths and other actions of that nature. The Jews who were in Soviet-controlled areas during the Holocaust can be divided in two: Hundreds of thousands who were drafted into the Red Army, mainly men; and the more than two million Jews among the civilian population.

During the course of the war, most Jewish men, like the general population, were drafted into the army. The Jewish population at home bore the same level of suffering, hunger and disease that afflicted the entire country. The city of Leningrad was under German siege for 900 days. During this period, the situation of the city's population deteriorated, mainly due to a lack of food that led to a high mortality rate.

Hungary

From 1919, the Regent Miklos Horthy, who had been an admiral during the monarchy of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, ruled Hungary. Horthy felt close to Nazi Germany and Hungary had been an ally of Germany from the end of the 1930s. In March 1938, Hungary passed its first anti-Jewish legislation, part of an ongoing Horthy policy. In exchange for his economic and diplomatic cooperation with Germany and for joining the pro-Nazi bloc, Hungary was able to annex many of the areas that it had longed to return to its borders, areas that had been lost to neighboring countries following the fall of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In 1938, Hungary received parts of Czechoslovakia, and in 1939 it annexed areas of Russian Carpathia (which at the time had also belonged to Czechoslovakia). In 1940, Hitler allowed Hungary to rule the territory of North Transylvania, which until that time had been part of Romania. In 1941, in exchange for its help in the occupation of Yugoslavia, Hungary received additional territory from Serbia. These annexations raised the number of Jews under Horthy's rule to some 725,000. Despite its anti-Jewish measures and the collaboration with Germany, in Hungary the situation of Jews was relatively good compared to that of occupied countries and of others.

In 1939 Hungary enacted a mandatory work law, in which Jews were drafted into the Hungarian Army and put to work, in separate units, doing most backbreaking and dangerous tasks such as paving roads and digging canals . In these units, nearly 42,000 Jews died. Until 1944, the Hungarian government rejected German demands to implement the "Final Solution" for its Jews.

As the rout of the Germans drew near, in the later stages of the war, Germany reacted to Hungary's perceived interest in leaving the bloc of countries under its influence: Troops were deployed in Hungary in March 1944. At the same time, a hasty effort was made to concentrate the Jews and transport them east. The situation on the front was worsening and the approach of Soviet forces caused an acceleration of transports, especially from the main cities in the country. Over the course of 56 days, 440,000 Jews from Hungarian cities were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Most were killed upon arrival. The concentration, imprisonment in improvised ghettos and transport of Hungarian Jews was carried out by policemen and the Hungarian gendarmerie with the assistance of German SS personnel. The transports ended in July upon Horthy's instruction. This order essentially saved 200,000 Jews in the greater Budapest area who remained in Hungary. In October, members of the "Arrow Cross," with the help of the Germans, took over Hungary. The Arrow Cross was a fascist, racist party that declared Judaism a race, and then attempted to renew the transports. However, most remaining Jews of Budapest were not transported, and survived.

In March 1944, with the start of the occupation, Horthy continued in his role as Regent of Hungary, and the prime minister was Dome Sztojay, who had been the Hungarian ambassador to Berlin. Hungarian citizens who helped Jews could be expected to be jailed for their acts, and in several cases, especially during the period of the "Arrow Cross," the punishment was death.