Those of half and quarter Jewish descent remain largely forgotten in the history of the Third Reich and genocide of the Holocaust. Known as Mischlinge, persons of deemed “mixed blood” or “hybrid” status faced extensive persecution and alienation within German society and found themselves in the crosshairs of a rampant National Socialist racial ideology. Controversially, these people proved somewhat difficult to define under Nazi law that sought to cleave the Volk from the primarily Jewish “other”, and as the mechanization toward Hitler’s “Final Solution” the Mischlinge faced probable annihilation. The somewhat neglected status of Mischlinge necessitates a refocusing on German racialization as well as reconsideration of the implications wrought by the alienation and ultimate persecution of the thousands of half and quarter Jews subjugated in Nazi Germany. An exploration of Jewish mixed blood status in Nazi Germany renders a brief history of anticipatory racial conceptions leading up to the Third Reich. The use of Mischlinge as well as other labels intended to denote mixed blood naturally evolved out of well-established racial conceptions central to Germany and the Third Reich ideology. This ideology, which existed as “an uneasy fusion of different strands of racial elitism and popularism,” defined persons as according to not only their Rasse or racial identity, but also membership of the German people or Volk (Hutton 15, 18). The idea of the Volk denoted not only shared language and heritage as well as right of citizenship, but the ordained right to inhabit German lands. Above all, this idea concerned triumphant unification of a German people perceived to be under threat of dissolution by ethnic and religious groups such as the R... ... middle of paper ... ...he So-Called Mischlinge.” The Holocaust and History. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 155-133. Glasser, Ingeborg. Dance of the Panther: A Memoir of Love and Terror in Nazi Germany. New York: Book Republic Press, 2006. Grenville, John A.S. “Neglected Holocaust Victims: the Mischlinge, the Judischversippte, and the Gypsies.” The Holocaust and History. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 315-326. Hutton, Christopher M. Race and the Third Reich. Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2005. Koehn, Ilse. Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1977. Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Works Cited Berenbaum, Micheal. Witness To The Holocaust p.112-113. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 1997. Edeiken, Yale F. "An Introduction To The Einsatzgruppen." 2012.
“Modern anti-Semitism, in contrast to earlier forms, was based not on religious practices of the Jews but on the theory that Jews comprised an inferior race. Anti-Semites exploited the fact that Jews had been forced into exile by extolling as ‘fact’ that their ‘rootlessness’ had a genetic basis. A Jew was a Jew not because he or she practiced any particular religion, but because it was a character of his or her blood.”
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
In the years between 1933 and 1945, Germany was engulfed by the rise of a powerful new regime and the eventual spoils of war. During this period, Hitler's quest for racial purification turned Germany not only at odds with itself, but with the rest of the world. Photography as an art and as a business became a regulated and potent force in the fight for Aryan domination, Nazi influence, and anti-Semitism. Whether such images were used to promote Nazi ideology, document the Holocaust, or scare Germany's citizens into accepting their own changing country, the effect of this photography provides enormous insight into the true stories and lives of the people most affected by Hitler's racism. In fact, this photography has become so widespread in our understanding and teaching of the Holocaust that often other factors involved in the Nazi's racial policy have been undervalued in our history textbooks-especially the attempt by Nazi Germany to establish the Nordic Aryans as a master race through the Lebensborn experiment, a breeding and adoption program designed to eliminate racial imperfections.
Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. 1st Ed. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP,
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London)
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
Through the course of history, the Jewish people have been mistreated, condemned, robbed, even put to death because of their religion. In the Middle Ages, they were forced to wear symbols on their clothing, identifying them as Jews. The dates 1933 to 1945 also marked the period of the deadly Holocaust in which many atrocities were committed other minority groups. Six million innocent Jews were exterminated because of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” This paper will exhibit how Adolf Hitler used the three anti-Jewish policies written in history, conversion, expulsion, and annihilation to his advantage which Hitler also used against the Gypsies.
Herf, Jeffrey (2006). The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Ideology and Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust. Harvard University Press.
Buergenthal, Thomas. A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy. New York: Little, Brown, 2009.
The phrase "a lesson to be learned and a tragedy to behold" has been indelibly attached to the Holocaust that to think of it in any other way is thought to insult all those of the Jewish community who lost their lives to the attempted genocide of their race by the Nazi regime. Despite such brevity attached to learning lessons from the Holocaust one must wonder whether the lesson has actually been learned or if people will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. Angela Merkel, the current German Chancellor, has stated that the German experiment towards multi-culturalism has failed, those who wish to migrate into the country must learn the German way whether it is the language they speak, the culture they have or the very religion they hold dear . Such sentiments seem to echo those of the former Third Reich which held the German way, the Aryan way, as the only path to which people should attempt to pursue. While this paper is not trying to vilify the current German government nor is it trying to compare it to the Third Reich, the fact remains that the steps their government is taking fall uneasily close to that of their vilified predecessor. The fact is though, the German government is merely following through with the popular sentiment of its citizenry who believe immigrants coming into the country disrupts the German way of life and all attempts to live side by side in peace have failed. Despite being a predominantly Christian nation who supposedly follow the way of Christ, to hear them say that makes one wonder whether their claims truly reflects their deeds. It is from this situation that the essay of Eckardt and its view that the Holocaust is a "Christian Problem" becomes relevant to what is happening in the world today.
14. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second
"Hitler and Nazis, Statements Concerning Jews and Judaism." n.d. Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne. 12 May 2014. .
Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) [first published as If This Is a Man], p. 86.