Book Tests

Book Test #1

Many, if not most, of people alive today know about the Holocaust.  Many, if not most, people also know about the Jewish religion.  However, while most know about the Holocaust and labor camps, many people do not know how most Jews ended up there.  Many cities, such as Cracow, had immense Aktions, and upon their completion most Jews were sent to places such as Plaszow, Auschwitz, or other camps (Keneally, 1982).  While reading, Schindler’s List, I saw this word Aktion, many times and was struck by a single question: what is an Aktion, and how are they conducted?

                Thomas Keneally, the author of Schindler’s List, gave an extremely detailed account of the major Aktions of Cracow.  However, it was Erich Harberer that gave me a focused definition.  He states that an Aktion was “a coordinated extermination program that began with the deportation of the Jews from the ghettos in Lublin and Kracow in March 1942 and ended in October/November 1943” (Haberer, 2006).  He later goes on to describe what the deportation truly composed of; which was stealing the valuables, belongings, and estates from Jews and forcing them into labor camps and exploiting them for free labor.  During the Jew exportations to labor camps, mass public shootings and beatings became common sights (Haberer, 2006).  Keneally describes one such public shooting in the first Aktion of Cracow, where a man refused to spit on the “Parchment Torah scroll” (Keneally, 1982).  Every other person in the line spit, except one man; and the Einsatzgruppe men shot him first and then proceeded to shoot the rest, though they had complied with the demands.  Following Aktions were conducted by SS men who would search the ghettos for people without work papers claiming that they were essential Jews to the war economy (Keneally, 1982).  Those without papers had to bribe officials or risk hiding to avoid being separated in lines and being shipped out of the ghetto to a labor camp.  Eventually, despite papers, all Jews would be cleared from cities such as Lublin and Cracow.  Herber describes the situation at the time well when he stated that “the likelihood of survival was minimal” (Haberer, 2006).  In conclusion, the goal of the Aktion was make an area or city “judenrein (clean of jews)”, but whatever means necessary (Keneally, 1982).

                While labor camps were known for their brutality and crimes against humanity, many times events leading up to placement in such camps was just as terrible.  Aktions were often massacres as well as gathering of Jews from the ghettos.  From the research, it is clear that the ghettos were just as much a place of fear as places such as Auschwitz; and a majority of the reason for this is due to the mass numbers of Aktions that occurred.

Reference List

Haberer, E. (2006). “Aktion Reinhardt”: Der Völkermord an den Juden im Generalgouvernement 1941-1944. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 24(4), 170-174. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Keneally, T. (1982). Schindler’s list. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.