Evidence #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims

Ethnic criteria
Romani
The Nazi genocide of the Romani people was ignored by scholars until the 1980s, and opinions
continue to differ on its details. According to historians Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, the
genocide of the Romani began later than that of the Jews and a smaller percentage was killed.
[29]

Hitler's genocidal campaign against Europe's Romani population involved the application of

Nazi "racial hygiene" (selective breeding applied to humans). Although despite discriminatory
measures some Romani (including some of Germany's Sinti and Lalleri) were spared
deportation and death, the remaining Romani groups suffered a fate similar to that of the Jews.
Romani were deported to the Jewish ghettos, shot by SS Einsatzgruppen in their villages, or
deported and gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.
Estimates of the Romani death toll in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000.[30] The
Romani genocide was formally recognized by West Germany in 1982 and by Poland in 2011.[31]

Slavs
The Slavs were one of the most widely persecuted groups during the war, with
many Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Sorbs and others killed by the Nazis. According to British
historian Ian Kershaw, the Nazis' genocide and brutality was their way of
ensuring Lebensraum ("living space") for those who met Hitler's narrow racial requirements; this
necessitated the elimination of Bolsheviks and Slavs:
The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs
from central and eastern Europe and to create aLebensraum for Aryans ... As Bartov (The
Eastern Front; Hitler's Army) shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most
of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav
soldiers and civilians. This was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with
Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect ... German soldiers' letters and memoirs
reveal their terrible reasoning: Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but
threatening race. Only a minority of officers and men were Nazi members. [32]
Ukrainians
Between 1941 and 1945, approximately three million Ukrainian and other gentiles were killed as
part of Nazi extermination policies in present-day Ukraine.[33][34]More Ukrainians were killed

fighting the Wehrmacht in the Red Army than American, British and French soldiers combined.
[35]

Original Nazi plans called for the extermination of 65 percent of the nation's 23.2 million

Ukrainians,[36][37] with the survivors treated as slaves.[38] Over two million Ukrainians were deported
to Germany as slave labor.[39] The ten-year plan would have exterminated, expelled, Germanized
or enslaved most (or all) Ukrainians.
Soviet Slavs and POWs
During Operation Barbarossa (the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union), millions of Red
Army prisoners of war were summarily executed in the field by German armies (the Waffen SS in
particular), died under inhumane conditions in German prisoner of war camps and death
marches or were shipped to concentration camps for execution. The Germans killed an
estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs by starvation, exposure and execution over an eight-month
period in 194142.[42] According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, by the winter of 1941
"starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions". As many as
500,000 people were killed in the concentration camps.[43]
Soviet civilian populations in the occupied areas were severely persecuted and endured the
treacherous conditions of the Eastern Front, which spawned atrocities such as the siege of
Leningrad (when more than 1.2 million civilians died). Thousands of peasant villages across
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were annihilated by German troops. During the occupation
the Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod region lost about a quarter of its population. An estimated
one-quarter of Soviet civilian deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies (five million
Russians, three million Ukrainians and 1.5 million Belarusians) were racially motivated.[44] In
1995 theRussian Academy of Sciences reported that civilian deaths in the occupied USSR,
including Jews, at the hands of the Germans totaled 13.7 million dead (20 percent of the
population of 68 million). The figure includes 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals;
2.2 million deaths of persons deported to Germany as forced labour, and 4.1 million famine and
disease deaths. An estimated three million people also died of starvation in unoccupied territory.
The losses occurred within the 19461991 borders of the USSR, and include territories annexed
in 193940.[45] The deaths of 8.2 million Soviet civilians, including Jews, were documented by the
Soviet Extraordinary State Commission.[46]

People with disabilities

According to their eugenics policy, the Nazis believed that the disabled were a burden to society
because they needed care and were considered an affront to their notion of a society composed
of a perfect race. About 375,000 people were sterilized against their will due to their disabilities.
[47]

Those with disabilities were among the first to be killed by the Nazis; according to the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the T-4 Program (established in 1939) was the
model for future Nazi exterminations and set a precedent for the genocide of what they
described as the Jewish race.[48] The program attempted to maintain the "purity" of the Aryan
race by systematically killing children and adults with physical deformities or suffering
from mental illness, using gas chambers for the first time. Although Hitler formally halted the
program in late August 1941, the killings secretly continued until the end of the war and an
estimated 275,000 people with congenital disabilities died. [49]

Non-Europeans
The Nazis promoted xenophobia and racism against all "non-Aryan" races. African (black subSaharan or North African) and Asian (East and South Asian) residents of Germany and black
prisoners of war, such as the French colonial troops captured in the Battle of France, were also
victims of Nazi racial policy.[50] When the Nazis came to power hundreds of African-German
children, the offspring of German mothers and African soldiers brought in during the French
occupation, lived in the Rhineland.[51] In Mein Kampf, Hitler described the children of marriages to
African occupation troops as a contamination of the white race "by Negro blood on the Rhine in
the heart of Europe"[52] who were "bastardising the European continent at its core". [51] According
to Hitler, "Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea
of bastardising the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so
that the Jew might dominate".[53]
Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on September 27, 1940, and was part of
the Axis. No Japanese people were known to be deliberately imprisoned or killed, since they
were considered "honorary Aryans". In The Political Testament of Adolf Hitler, he wrote:
I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves ... and I admit
freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past,
just as we have the right to be proud of the civilisation to which we belong. [54]
South Africans, white people and Europeans of gentile ancestry from other continents were
exempt, as were Latin Americans of "evident" Germanic or "Aryan" (non-mestizo) ancestry.

Lesbians and gays

Non-heterosexual people were also targets of the Holocaust, since male homosexuality was
deemed incompatible with Nazism. The Nazis believed that gay men were weak, effeminate and
unable to fight for the German nation; homosexuals were unlikely to produce children and
increase the German birthrate. According to the Nazis, "inferior races" produced more children
than Aryans, so anything which diminished Germany's reproductive potential was considered a

racial danger.[55]Homosexuality was also thought to be contagious by the Nazis. [56] By 1936,
Heinrich Himmler was leading efforts to persecute gay men under existing and new antihomosexual laws. More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000
were arrested and 50,000 were convicted and imprisoned. [57] An unknown number were
institutionalized in state-run mental hospitals. Hundreds of European gay men living under Nazi
occupation were chemically castrated by court order.[58] Although an estimated 5,000 to 15,000
gay men were imprisoned in concentration camps,[58][59] the number who died is uncertain.
According to Austrian survivor Heinz Heger, gay men "suffered a higher mortality rate than other
relatively small victim groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and political prisoners". [60] Gay men
in Nazi concentration camps were identified by a pink triangle on their shirts, along with men
convicted of sexually assaulting children andbestiality.[61] Lesbians were not usually treated as
harshly as gay men; although they were labelled "asocial", they were rarely imprisoned on
sexual-orientation charges. In the concentration camps, they usually wore a black triangle.
[62]

According to the USHMM website, "Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals.

Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorise German
homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives
of many more."[58]
Many homosexuals who were liberated from the concentration camps were persecuted in
postwar Germany. Survivors were subject to prosecution under Paragraph 175 (which forbade
"lewdness between men"), with time served in the concentration camps deducted from their
sentences. This contrasted with the treatment of other Holocaust victims, who were
compensated for the loss of family members and educational opportunities. [63]

Political victims
Political prisoners
Another large group of victims was composed of German and foreign civilian activists across the
political spectrum who opposed the Nazi regime, captured resistance fighters (many of whom
were executed duringor immediately aftertheir interrogation, particularly in
occupied Poland and France) and, sometimes, their families. German political prisoners were a
substantial proportion of the first inmates at Dachau (the prototypical Nazi concentration camp).
The politicalPeople's Court was notorious for the number of its death sentences.[64]

Leftists
German Communists were among the first to be imprisoned in concentration camps.[65][66] Their
ties to the USSR concerned Hitler, and the Nazi Party was intractably opposed to communism.
Rumors of communist violence were spread by the Nazis to justify the Enabling Act of 1933,
which gave Hitler his first dictatorial powers. Hermann Gring testified at Nuremberg that Nazi

willingness to repress German Communists prompted Hindenburg and the old elite to cooperate
with them. Hitler and the Nazis also despised German leftists because of their resistance to Nazi
racism. Many German leftist leaders were Jews who had been prominent in the 1919 Spartacist
uprising. Hitler referred to Marxism and "Bolshevism" as means for "the international Jew" to
undermine "racial purity", stir up classtension and mobilize trade unions against the government
and business. When the Nazis occupied a territory, communists, socialists and anarchists were
usually among the first to be repressed; this included summary executions. An example is
Hitler's Commissar Order, in which he demanded the summary execution of all captured Soviet
troops who were political commissars.[67]

Other religious persecution

The Nazis also targeted religious groups for political and ideological reasons. Thousands of
Christian clergy were killed, including some with a Jewish background (Edith Stein, for example).
The Nazis considered Jews a racial group; secular people and those of other religions who had
Jewish ancestry were, therefore, Jews (a belief shared by some Jews). [68]

Jehovah's Witnesses
Historian DetlefGarbe, director of the Neuengamme Memorial in Hamburg, wrote about Jehovah's
Witnesses: "No other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism
[Nazism] with comparable unanimity and steadfastness". [69]Between 2,500 and 5,000 Witnesses died
in the concentration camps;[15] unwilling to fight for any cause, they refused to serve in the army.[70]

Roman Catholics
The Catholic Church was persecuted under the Third Reich,[71] with the Nazi leadership hoping to
gradually de-Christianize Germany.[72] Political Catholicism was a target of Hitler's 1934 Night of
the Long Knives.[73][74][75] German clergy, nuns and lay leaders were also targeted after the Nazi
takeover, leading to thousands of arrests over the following years.[76] Priests who were part of
the Catholic resistance were killed. Hitler's invasion of Catholic Poland in 1939 began World War
II, and the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their campaign to destroy Polish culture.
In 1940, the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp was established.[77] Of 2,720 clergy
imprisoned at Dachau, the overwhelming majority (94.88 percent) were Catholic. [78] According to Ian
Kershaw, about 400 German priests were sent to the camp.[79] Although the Holy See concluded a
1933 concordat with Germany to protect Catholicism in the Third Reich, the Nazis frequently violated
the pact in their Kirchenkampf ("struggle with the churches").[80] They shut down the Catholic press,
schools, political parties and youth groups in Germany amid murder and mass arrests. [81][82][83] In
March 1937, Pope Pius XI issued his MitbrennenderSorge encyclical accusing the Nazi government
of violating the 1933 concordat and sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of
secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". [76]

The church was especially harshly treated in annexed regions, such as

Austria. Viennese Gauleiter OdiloGlobocnik confiscated property, closed Catholic organizations
and sent many priests to Dachau. In the Czech lands, religious orders were suppressed, schools
closed, religious instruction forbidden and priests sent to concentration camps.
[84]

Catholic bishops, clergy, nuns and laypeople protested and attacked Nazi policies in occupied

territories; in 1942, the Dutch bishops protested the mistreatment of Jews. [85] When
Archbishop Johannes de Jong refused to yield to Nazi threats, the Gestapo rounded up Catholic
"Jews" and sent 92 to Auschwitz.[86] One Dutch Catholic abducted in this manner was nun Edith
Stein, who died at Auschwitz along with Poland'sMaximilian Kolbe. Other Catholic victims of the
Holocaust have been beatified, including Poland's 108 Martyrs of World War II, theMartyrs of
Nowogrdek, Dutch theologian Titus Brandsma and Germany's Lbeck martyrs and Bernhard
Lichtenberg.
Poland
According to Norman Davies, the Nazi terror was "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland
than anywhere in Europe."[87] Polish Catholic victims of the Third Reich numbered in the millions.
Nazi ideology viewed ethnic Polesthe mainly-Catholic ethnic majority of Polandas
subhuman. After their 1939 invasion of Poland, the Nazis instituted a policy of murdering (or
suppressing) the ethnic-Polish elite (including Catholic religious leaders). [88] The Nazi plan for
Poland was the nation's destruction, which necessitated attacking the Polish Church (particularly
in areas annexed by Germany).[89] About the brief period of military control from September 1 to
October 25, 1939, Davies wrote: "According to one source, 714 mass executions were carried
out, and 6,376 people, mainly Catholics, were shot. Other put the death toll in one town alone at
20,000. It was a taste of things to come."[90]
In Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, severe persecution began. The Nazis systematically
dismantled the church, arresting its leaders, exiling its clergy and closing its churches,
monasteries and convents. Germanization of the annexed regions began in December 1939
with deportations of men, women and children.[91] According to Richard J. Evans, in
the ReichsgauWartheland"numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the
Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp
in the Reich, or simply shot. Altogether some 1700 Polish priests ended up at Dachau: half of
them did not survive their imprisonment."[92] Among the clergy who died at Dachau were many of
the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II.[93]
Hitler said in 1940, "Poles may have only one mastera German. Two masters cannot exist
side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed." [88] Thomas J.
Craughwell wrote that from 1939 to 1945, an estimated 3,000 members of the Polish clergy (18
percent) were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps. [94] According to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1,811 Polish priests died in Nazi concentration camps.[95] Among the

persecuted resisters was Irena Sendlerowa, head of the children's section of egota, who
placed more than 2,500 Jewish children in convents, orphanages, schools, hospitals and
homes. Captured by the Gestapo in 1943, Sendlerowa was crippled by torture. [96]

Protestants
The Nazis attempted to deal with Protestant dissent with their ideology by creating the Reich
Church, a union of 28 existing Protestant groups espousing Positive Christianity (a doctrine
compatible with Nazism). Non-Aryan ministers were suspended and church members called
themselves German Christians, with "the swastika on their chest and the cross in their heart." [70]
[97]

The Protestant opposition to the Nazis established the Confessing Church, a rival umbrella

organization of independent German regional churches which was persecuted.[97]

Bah'Faith
The Bah' Faith was formally banned in the Third Reich. Heinrich Himmler signed a 1937 order
disbanding Bah' institutions in Germany[98] because of their "international and pacifist
tendencies".[99] In 1939 and 1942, there were sweeping arrests of former members of the
German Spiritual Assembly. May 1944 saw a public trial in Darmstadt; although Hermann
Grossmann defended the faith, the Bah's were steeply fined and their institutions continued to
be disbanded.[100]

Freemasons
The Nazis claimed that high-degree Masons were willing members of "the Jewish conspiracy"
and Freemasonry was a cause of Germany's defeat in World War I.Reich Main Security
Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA) records indicate the persecution of Freemasons
during the Holocaust.[101] RSHA Amt VII (written records), overseen by Franz Six, was responsible
for "ideological" tasks: the creation of antisemitic and anti-Masonic propaganda. Although the
exact number is unknown, an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 Freemasons were killed as a result
of Hitler's December 1941 Nacht und Nebel directive.[12] Masonic concentration-camp inmates,
considered political prisoners, wore an inverted red triangle.[102]
Small blue forget-me-nots were first used by the ZurSonne Grand Lodge in 1926 as a Masonic
emblem at its annual convention in Bremen. In 1938 a forget-me-not badge made by the factory
which produced the Masonic badge was chosen for the annual Nazi Winterhilfswerk, the charity
drive of the National Socialist People's Welfare (the party's welfare branch). The coincidence
enabled Freemasons to wear the forget-me-not badge as a secret sign of Masonic membership.
[103][104][105]

After the war, the forget-me-not was again used as a Masonic emblem at the first annual United
Grand Lodges of Germany convention in 1948.[106] The badge is worn on the lapels of Masons

worldwide in remembrance of those who have suffered in the name of Freemasonry, particularly
during the Nazi era.[106]

Esperantists
Speakers of Esperanto, the international auxiliary language, were viewed with suspicion by the
Nazis. Hitler considered it a language of the "Jewish conspiracy" because its creator, L. L.
Zamenhof, was Jewish.[107]

Enemy nationals
Thousands of people, primarily diplomats, of nationalities associated with the Allies (China and
Mexico, for example) and Spanish Civil War refugees in occupied France were interned or
executed. After Italy's 1943 surrender, many Italian nationals (including partisans and Italian
soldiers disarmed by the Germans) were sent to concentration camps.