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The Jews fleeing the country, the ghettos, the concentration camps had all started. The night of the Long Knives had already happened. Don't know if they were

by moomin 9y ago

The Jews fleeing the country, the ghettos, the concentration camps had all started. The night of the Long Knives had already happened. Don't know if they were unique, or worse than the KKK (when the KKK had any power they killed a lot of people). But they were definitely, obviously, way evil.

dalbasal 9y ago
Kristelnacht happened around that time, concentration camps (the final solution) came later. I imagine that from a foreign/non-jewish perspective nazi militarism and expansionism (Czechoslovakia, Poland & Austria) were way bigger deals than racism. Anti-jewish state action and/or thuggery was relatively commonplace. Kristelnacht is just another pogrom without the historical context making it the symbolic first blood of the holocaust.
- greedo 9y ago
  Just a quibble, the concentration camps didn't start out as part of the Final Solution. They started out as a place to confine dissidents, etc.
  - moomin 9y ago
    There's a terminology problem here. Scholars call the "final solution" camps extermination camps. They started after the invasion of Poland. Concentration camps in general began the moment the Nazis took power.
    - greedo 9y ago
      Exactly. The Germans referred to the initial camps as "Konzentrationslager" or "Arbeitslager" designed primarily around slave labor. They weren't overly concerned about prisoner death, but that was a byproduct in their minds. They wanted to work the Jews and other groups they considered Untermenschen until they dropped dead. Some camps were two-part; comprising a slave camp and an extermination camp. Auschwitz is a good example of this, though Treblinka also had a small work camp connected to its extermination camp. The work camp was primarily to support the vernichtungslager. In contrast, the sole goal of the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) was the expeditious murder of "undesirables."

by moomin 9y ago

dalbasal 9y ago

Kristelnacht happened around that time, concentration camps (the final solution) came later. I imagine that from a foreign/non-jewish perspective nazi militarism and expansionism (Czechoslovakia, Poland & Austria) were way bigger deals than racism. Anti-jewish state action and/or thuggery was relatively commonplace. Kristelnacht is just another pogrom without the historical context making it the symbolic first blood of the holocaust.

greedo 9y ago
Just a quibble, the concentration camps didn't start out as part of the Final Solution. They started out as a place to confine dissidents, etc.
- moomin 9y ago
  There's a terminology problem here. Scholars call the "final solution" camps extermination camps. They started after the invasion of Poland. Concentration camps in general began the moment the Nazis took power.
  - greedo 9y ago
    Exactly. The Germans referred to the initial camps as "Konzentrationslager" or "Arbeitslager" designed primarily around slave labor. They weren't overly concerned about prisoner death, but that was a byproduct in their minds. They wanted to work the Jews and other groups they considered Untermenschen until they dropped dead. Some camps were two-part; comprising a slave camp and an extermination camp. Auschwitz is a good example of this, though Treblinka also had a small work camp connected to its extermination camp. The work camp was primarily to support the vernichtungslager. In contrast, the sole goal of the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) was the expeditious murder of "undesirables."