Formation of large urban agglomerations. Formation of urban agglomerations as a factor in the modernization of Russian space

From the editor. An abridged version of this work has already appeared in print. We are publishing for the first time full version articles.

Soon after the end of the 2nd World War, when the topic of the Holocaust gradually began to occupy an important place in a number of modern historical and philosophical-theological developments, attempts began to be made to identify the complex of causes - in their historical, social, economic, psychological context - that made it possible carrying out the monstrous genocide of the Jews. In the corresponding analysis, researchers had to pay attention to the comparative characteristics of the Holocaust, previous and subsequent facts of racial elimination, which were considered as “genocides”. As a result, there has been debate for many years as to whether the Holocaust - the deliberate extermination of the Jewish people during World War II - can be considered a unique phenomenon, going beyond the traditional framework of the phenomenon known as "genocide", or the Holocaust fits well with others famous history genocides. The most extensive and productive discussion on this issue, called Historikerstreit, unfolded among German historians in the mid-80s of the last century and played important role in further research. Although main theme The discussion focused on the nature of Nazism itself; the issues of the Holocaust and Auschwitz, for obvious reasons, occupied a key place in it. During the discussion, two directions emerged, within which opposing theses were defended. The "nationalist-conservative trend" ("nationalists"), represented by Ernst Nolte and his followers such as Andreas Hilgruber and Klaus Hildebrand, defended the position that the Holocaust was not a unique phenomenon, but could be compared and placed on a par with other disasters XX century, such as the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, the Vietnam War and even Soviet invasion to Afghanistan. Moreover, according to Nolte, Hitler's crimes should be seen as a reaction to the equally barbaric actions of the Bolsheviks, which began more than two decades before Auschwitz. The “left-liberal trend” (“internationalists”) was represented primarily by the famous German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. The latter argued that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in German history and the psychology of the Germans, from which comes the special specificity of the Holocaust, focused on Nazism and only on it. Despite the presence of apologetic-extra-scientific elements in the position of the “national conservatives”, which raise doubts about their scientific integrity and even gave rise to accusations of them providing a “scientific” justification for Nazism and giving “respectability” to the idea of ​​Holocaust revisionism, the topics and arguments put forward were objectively raised in the discussion both sides undoubtedly gave significant impetus to subsequent scientific research and made important contributions to the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. A landmark work here, in particular, was the book of the American historian Charles Mayer, “The Irresistible Past,” who formulated three main substantive characteristics of the Holocaust, identified during the discussion and which became the subject of dispute between the parties: singularity(singularity), comparability(comparability), identity(identity) . In fact, it was precisely the characteristic of “singularity” (uniqueness, originality) that became the stumbling block in the later discussion. It is no coincidence that the largest scientist in the field, prof. Stephen Katz of Cornell University, who defends the idea of ​​the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, called his policy article"Holocaust: singularity of".

Before moving directly to the stated topic, it should be noted that it is extremely sensitive. The “painful center” of this topic is that when considering it, it collides, as Paul Zawadzki accurately defined, the language of memory and testimony and the language of academics. Viewed from within Jewry, the Holocaust experience is an absolute tragedy, since all suffering is Your own suffering and it is absolutized, made unique and forms the identity of Jewry: “If I take off ... the “sociologist’s cap” to remain only a Jew whose family was destroyed in time of war, then there can be no talk of any relativism. There can be no comparison, because in my life, in the history of my family or in my Jewish identification, the Shoah is a unique event.... The internal logic of the identification process pushes into side of emphasizing uniqueness." It is no coincidence that any other use of the word Holocaust (or Shoa, in Jewish terminology), for example in the plural (“Holocausts”) or in relation to another genocide, usually causes a painful reaction. Thus, Zawadzki cites examples when strong protests of the Jewish public caused comparison ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia with the Holocaust, comparisons of Milosevic with Hitler, and an expanded interpretation of the Klaus Barbier trial in France in 1987 as "crimes against humanity", when the genocide of Jews was considered only as one of the crimes, and not as unique crime. Here we can add the recent controversy over the removal of unauthorized Catholic crosses in Auschwitz, when the question was debated whether Auschwitz should be considered solely as a place and symbol of Jewish suffering, although it became the site of the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles and people of other nationalities. And of course, even greater indignation of the Jewish community was caused by a recent incident in England, when the famous Reform rabbi and writer Dan Cohn-Sherbok, who defends the humane treatment of animals, compared modern cattle cars in England with the cars in which Jews were sent to Auschwitz, and used expression "animal holocaust"

Any generalization of the suffering of the Jews, again, often leads to the erosion of the specific subject of the Holocaust: anyone can find themselves in the place of the Jews, the point is not about the Jews or Nazism at all, but about “humanity” and its problems in general. As Pinchas Agmon wrote: “The Holocaust is neither a specifically Jewish problem nor an event only Jewish history". In such a production, the “Holocaust” sometimes completely loses its specific content and becomes a generalized description of any genocide. Thus, even Marek Edelman, the only surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, readily compares the events of those years with the much more limited scale of events in Yugoslavia : “We can be ashamed... of the genocide that is taking place today in Yugoslavia... This is Hitler’s victory, which he wins from the other world. The dictatorship is the same, regardless of whether it is dressed in communist or fascist clothing." The logical development of deconcretization of the Holocaust is to strip it of even the signs of genocide itself, when the "Holocaust" is transformed into the most general model of oppression and social injustice. German playwright Peter Weiss , having written a play about Auschwitz, says: “The word ‘Jew’ is not used in the play... I identify with the Jews no more than I identify with the Vietnamese or the South African blacks. I simply identify myself with the oppressed of the whole world." In other words, any comparativism, invading the area of ​​individual and collective memory of Jews, inevitably relativizes the pathos of the exceptionalism of Jewish suffering. This situation often causes an understandably painful reaction in the Jewish environment.

On the other hand, the Holocaust is a historical and social phenomenon, and as such, naturally claims to be analyzed in a broader context than just at the level of memory and testimony of the Jewish people - in particular, at the academic level. The very need to study the Holocaust as historical phenomenon just as inevitably forces one to operate in academic language, and logic historical research pushes towards comparativism. "One can also defend the idea that comparativism is the basis of knowledge... Comparativism is at the center of the social sciences insofar as they use models." It is no coincidence that Steven Katz, in proving the uniqueness of the Holocaust at the academic level, turns to a broad historical context and chooses comparative studies as the main tool. But here it is discovered that the very choice of comparative studies as a tool for academic research ultimately undermines the idea of ​​​​the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, in its social and ethical significance. After all, the content of the historical lesson of the Holocaust has long gone beyond the fact of the genocide of Jews, and is considered as a model of any genocide. - It is no coincidence that in a number of countries the study of the Holocaust has been introduced into the school curriculum as an attempt at the educational level to overcome racist and chauvinistic prejudices and to cultivate national and religious tolerance. The main takeaway from the Holocaust lesson is: “This (i.e., the Holocaust) must not happen again!” However, if the Holocaust is “unique”, i.e. is unique, unique, then it is necessary to stipulate to what extent the Holocaust can serve as a model: either the Holocaust is unique and cannot be a “lesson” by definition, or it is a “lesson”, but then it is to a certain extent comparable with other events of the past and present. As a result, it remains to either reformulate the idea of ​​“uniqueness” or abandon it altogether.

Thus, to a certain extent, the very formulation of the problem of the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust at the academic level is provocative. But the development of this problem also leads to certain logical inconsistencies. Yes, argues one of the authors, “Katz’s impressive scholarship essentially leaves no doubt that the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been settled once and for all. But another, more fundamental question remains unanswered: “So what?” ". Indeed, what conclusions follow from recognizing the Holocaust as “unique”? Katz formulated the answer in his book: “The Holocaust illuminates Nazism, not the other way around.” At first glance, the answer is convincing: the study of the Holocaust reveals the essence of such a monstrous phenomenon as Nazism. However, you can pay attention to something else - the Holocaust turns out to be directly linked to Nazism. And then the question literally arises: is it even possible to consider the Holocaust as an independent phenomenon without discussing the essence of Nazism? In a slightly different form, this question was asked to Katz, perplexing him: “But, Professor Katz, what if a person is not interested in Nazism?”

Taking into account all of the above, we will still take the liberty of expressing some thoughts on the uniqueness of the Holocaust strictly within the framework of an academic approach. Additionally, we emphasize that this approach involves a refusal to use any theological models of the Holocaust. Recognizing the spiritual richness of a number of such models and their significance for reception public consciousness, one cannot help but take into account that all of them are absolutely unverifiable from the point of view of the methodological approaches of modern humanities, and as such cannot be tools of academic research.

So, one of the generally accepted theses of modern academic science involved in Holocaust research is that the tragedy of the Jews carries with it general signs other genocides, but also has characteristics that make this genocide not just special, but still unique, exceptional, one of a kind. In principle, one can agree with this approach to the Holocaust. However, we would take the liberty of questioning the correctness of the traditional choice of those characteristics that are declared decisive for the definition of the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon and propose a different set of corresponding characteristics. Thanks to this, as we see it, the above-mentioned logical inconsistencies disappear, and in a certain sense, the above-mentioned contradiction between the socio-social significance of the Holocaust and the recognition of its “uniqueness” in the academic sense is removed.

In comparative studies, the Holocaust is inevitably compared with known historical genocides, or events close to genocide. Thus, Steven Katz, who undoubtedly plays a leading role in such studies, compares the genocide of Jews with the medieval witch trials, the genocide of Indians and blacks in America, as well as with other Nazi genocides of gypsies, homosexuals and various European ethnic groups. Moreover, Katz insists that the analysis can be carried out in purely quantitative, i.e. objective assessments.

As a result of such an analysis, the following are usually indicated as the three main characteristics of the Holocaust that determine its “uniqueness”, answering the questions “how”, “what” and “why”:

1. Object and purpose. Unlike all other genocides, the Nazis' goal was the total destruction of the Jewish people as an ethnic group.

2. Scale. In four years, 6 million Jews were killed - a third of the entire Jewish people. Humanity has never known genocide on such a scale.

3. Means. For the first time in history, the mass extermination of Jews was carried out by industrial means, using modern technologies.

These characteristics, taken together, according to a number of authors, determine the uniqueness of the Holocaust. But an impartial study of the comparative calculations presented, from our point of view, is not convincing confirmation of the thesis about the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust.

So, let's consider all the triarguments one by one:

A) Object and purpose of the Holocaust. According to prof. Katz, "The Holocaust is phenomenologically unique due to the fact that never before has it been aimed, as a matter of deliberate principle and actualized policy, at the physical destruction of every man, woman and child belonging to a particular people." If we get to the essence of this statement through a complicated verbal fabric, then it consists of the following: to the Nazis, who sought to make the world Judenrein, No one has ever deliberately intended to completely destroy any nation. The assertion seems dubious. Since ancient times, there has been a practice of complete elimination of national groups, in particular during wars of conquest and inter-tribal clashes. This task was solved in different ways: for example, by forced assimilation, but also by the complete destruction of such a group - which was already reflected in the ancient biblical narratives, in particular in the stories about the conquest of Canaan (Isa. 6:20; 7:9; 10: 39–40). Already in our time, in inter-tribal clashes, one or another national group is slaughtered, as for example in Burundi, when in the mid-nineties of the twentieth century. up to half a million Tutsis were massacred during the genocide. It is obvious that in any interethnic clashes people are killed precisely because they belong to the people participating in such a clash. Therefore, Elie Wiesel’s famous statement that, unlike representatives of other nations or social groups, “Jews were killed only because they were Jews”, in essence, does not explain anything. Moreover, if we accept the thesis that aggressiveness was a determining factor in the very development of mankind, then even more so Nazism is only an episode in the history of mankind, as a continuous chain of genocides.

Another important circumstance that defenders of the “uniqueness of the Holocaust” often refer to is that the Nazi policy aimed at the physical destruction of all Jews essentially had no rational basis, unlike other genocides that were determined by military, geopolitical, and ethnic factors. In a number of works, the socio-economic, psychological, historical roots of German anti-Semitism are consistently refuted, and the Holocaust is given a mystical-religious overtones of an attempt to kill the chosen people, and in their person the one God. In itself, such a point of view has a right to exist, if not for one serious “but”: modern historians have to argue about facts that clearly do not fit into the concept of the blind, reckless total murder of Jews on religious grounds. It is well known, for example, that when big money came into play, it interrupted the Nazi passion for murder. A fairly large number of wealthy Jews were able to escape from Nazi Germany before the start of the war. When, at the end of the war, part of the Nazi elite actively sought contacts with the Western allies for their own salvation, the Jews again happily became the subject of bargaining and all religious fervor faded into the background: when Goering’s party comrades called to account for the multimillion-dollar bribes, thanks to which Bernheimer's wealthy Jewish family was released from a concentration camp and accused of having connections with Jews; in the presence of Hitler, he uttered his famous and quite cynical phrase: Wer Jude ist, bestimme nur ich!(“Who is a Jew, only I determine!”) The dissertation of the American Brian Rigg caused lively controversy: its author provides numerous information that many people who were subject to Nazi laws on Jewish origin, served in the army of Nazi Germany, some of them holding high positions. And although this kind of facts was known to the high command of the Wehrmacht, due to various reasons they were hiding. Finally, we can recall the striking case of the participation of 350 Finnish Jewish officers in the war with the USSR as part of Finnish army- Hitler's allies, when three Jewish officers were awarded the Iron Cross, and a military field synagogue operated on the Nazi side of the front (!) All these facts, although they do not in any way diminish the monstrosity of the Nazi regime, still do not make the picture so clearly irrational.

b) The scale of the Holocaust. The number of Jewish victims of Nazism is truly amazing. Although the exact number of deaths is still a matter of debate, historical scholarship has established a figure close to 6 million people, i.e. the death toll represents a third of the world's Jewish population and between half and two-thirds of half of European Jewry. However, in historical retrospect, one can find events quite comparable to the Holocaust in terms of the scale of victims. So, Prof. himself. Katz provides figures according to which, in the process of colonization of America (North and South) by the second half of the 16th century. out of 80-112 million American Indians, 7/8 died, i.e. from 70 to 88 million. Katz admits: “If numbers alone constitute uniqueness, then the Jewish experience under Hitler was not unique.” At the same time, an interesting concept is put forward that, they say, mostly Indians died from epidemics, and there were not so many killed as a result of direct violence. But this argument can hardly be considered fair: epidemics accompanied the colonization process, and no one was interested in the fate of the Indians - in other words, the colonialists were directly responsible for their deaths. So during the deportation of the Caucasian peoples under Stalin huge amount died from the accompanying deprivation and hunger. If we follow Katz’s logic, then the number of Jews “exterminated as a result of direct violence” should not include those who died of hunger and unbearable conditions in ghettos and concentration camps.

The Armenian genocide, which is considered the first genocide of the twentieth century, is similar in scale to the Holocaust. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, from 1915 to 1923, according to various estimates, from 600 thousand to 1 million 250 thousand Armenians died, i.e. from one third to almost 3/4 of the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, which by 1915 amounted to 1 million 750 thousand people. Estimates of the number of victims among the Roma during the Nazi period range from 250 thousand to half a million people, and such a reputable source as the French encyclopedia Universalis considers the figure of half a million the most modest. In this case, we can talk about the death of up to half of the Roma population of Europe.

Moreover, in fact, in Jewish history there have been events that, in terms of the scale of victims, are quite close to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, any figures relating to the pogroms of the Middle Ages and early modern times, in particular, the Khmelnytsky period and the subsequent Russian-Polish and Polish-Swedish wars, are extremely approximate, as are the general demographic data of the Middle Ages. However, it is generally accepted that by 1648 the Jewish population of Poland, the largest Jewish community in the world, was ca. 300 thousand people. The numbers of those killed during the decade of the Khmelnytskyi period (1648-58) vary enormously in various sources: Jewish chronicles talk about 180 thousand and even 600 thousand Jews; according to Graetz, more than a quarter of a million Polish Jews were killed. A number of modern historians prefer much more modest figures - 40-50 thousand dead, which amounted to 20-25% of the Jewish population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is also a lot). But other historians are still inclined to consider the figure of 100 thousand people more reliable - in this case we can talk about a third of those killed out of the total number of Polish Jews.

Thus, both in modern history and in the history of the Jews one can find examples of genocides comparable in scale to the Holocaust. Of course, the genocide of Jews has special features that distinguish it from other genocides, as many scholars point out. But in any other genocide you can find specific features. Yes, Prof. Katz believes that the Nazi genocide of the Roma during World War II, although similar in a number of characteristics to the Jewish genocide, was different from it: it not only had an ethnic background, but was also directed against the Roma as a group with antisocial behavior. However, such an argument also proves that the Roma genocide had a special character in comparison with other genocides, including the Holocaust. Moreover, the Roma are the only people who were subjected to mass sterilization by the Nazis, which can also be considered as a unique feature. So if the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust is defined based on its special, one-of-a-kind features, then every other genocide can then be defined as having a “unique” character. Obviously, in this case, the meaning of using such a strong concept as “uniqueness” (meaning the uniqueness of the phenomenon as a whole, and its individual features) in relation to the Holocaust is emasculated - the use of the more appropriate “peculiarity” seems much more justified here.

V) "Manufacturability" Jewish genocide . Such a characterization can only be determined by specific historical conditions: “The Holocaust originated and was carried out in a modern rationalistic society, in high level development of civilization and culture and the peak of achievements of human culture. The Holocaust experience contains exclusively important information about the society of which we are members." But let us remember that at the Battle of Ypres, in the spring of 1915, Germany used chemical weapons for the first time and the Anglo-French troops suffered heavy losses. Can we say that in in this case, at the beginning of the 20th century, weapons of destruction were less technologically advanced than gas chambers? Of course, the difference here is that in one case they destroyed the enemy on the battlefield, and in the other - defenseless people. But both there and here they “technologically” destroyed people and at the Battle of Ypres, the first use of weapons of mass destruction also made the enemy defenseless. But even now the idea of ​​​​creating neutron and genetic weapons that kill a huge number of people with a minimum of other destruction continues to be discussed. Let's imagine for a second that this weapon (God forbid) will ever be used? And the “technological efficiency” of murder will be recognized as even higher than during the Nazi period. As a result, in fact, this criterion also turns out to be quite artificial.

So, each of the arguments individually turns out to be not very convincing. Therefore, as evidence, they speak of the uniqueness of the listed factors of the Holocaust in their totality (when, according to Katz, the factors “how” and “what” are balanced by the factor “why”). To some extent, this approach is fair, since it creates a more comprehensive vision, but still, we are talking more about the amazing atrocities of the Nazis, even more grandiose than even the most monstrous genocides, than about the radical difference between the Holocaust and other genocides. Any attempt to strengthen the element of “uniqueness” by attracting additional private characteristics, as for example, is done by Eberhard Jeckel: “never before has the state made a decision and declared by the power of a legally elected ruler that it will destroy a certain group of people...” only leads to the opposite result, because, as mentioned above, any genocide has unique particular characteristics.

But nevertheless, we are convinced that the Holocaust has a special and truly unique, in the full sense of the word, significance in world history. Only the characteristics of this uniqueness should be sought in other circumstances - which are no longer categories of purpose, tools and scale. Detailed analysis These characteristics deserve a separate study, so we will only briefly formulate them:

1. The Holocaust became the final phenomenon, the apotheosis, logical conclusion a successive series of persecutions and disasters throughout the history of the Jewish people. No other people knew such continuous persecution for almost 2 thousand years. In other words, all other, non-Jewish genocides were of an isolated nature, in contrast to the Holocaust, as a continuous phenomenon.

2. The genocide of the Jewish people was carried out by a civilization that, to a certain extent, grew on Jewish ethical and religious values ​​and, to one degree or another, recognized these values ​​as its own (the “Judeo-Christian civilization”, according to the traditional definition). In other words, there is a fact of self-destruction of the foundations of civilization. And here it is not so much Hitler’s Reich itself with its racist, half-pagan, half-Christian religious ideology that appears as the destroyer (after all, Hitler's Germany never renounced its Christian identity, albeit a special, “Aryan” one), as much as the Christian world as a whole, whose centuries-old anti-Judaism significantly contributed to the emergence of Nazism. All other genocides in history were not of such a self-destructive nature for civilization.

3. The Holocaust to a large extent turned the consciousness of civilization upside down and defined it further path development in which persecution on grounds of race and religion is declared intolerable. Despite the complex and sometimes tragic picture of the modern world, the intolerance of civilized states towards manifestations of chauvinism and racism was largely due to the understanding of the results of the Holocaust.

Thus, the uniqueness of the Holocaust phenomenon is not determined characteristic features Hitler's genocide as such, but the place and role of the Holocaust in the world historical and spiritual process.

For discussion materials, see V : "Historiker-Streit", Die Documentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Munich, 1986. The history of the discussion and its course is described in detail in the monograph : Jurgen Manemann, "Weil es nicht nur Geschichte ist", Munster; Hamburg; LIT, 1995, pp. 66–114.

When 193,000 Holocaust survivors remained alive in Israel, out of the half million who returned to the country after World War II, their grandchildren decided to start this custom, the purpose of which is to prevent the greatest catastrophe in human history from being forgotten. Some also supported another custom - they tattooed on their arms the numbers that were assigned to their relatives in Auschwitz.

Yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we went into several houses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and saw tears in people's eyes. But we also heard several stories that brought a smile to the faces of the storytellers.

Gabi Hartman experienced the war in Budapest as a small child. He told how he hid in a wardrobe for many months, and said that his most powerful memories were not the deportation of his family to Auschwitz, but the hunger: “It was terrible, it didn’t let me sleep, it didn’t let me breathe. And that’s why now I can’t even hear about diets.” Hugging his wife, Eva, he adds: “I never let her keep the fridge empty. I have such a mania now.”

Gabi and Eva met after the war and decided never to part and start in Israel new life. Their story is similar to the stories of many couples who survived the hell of Shoah and lost their loved ones in its fire. Their love was born on a land that, as Eve said, was flooded with tears, and here, without ceremony, celebrations or rabbis, they began a new life.

In another house in Jerusalem, 94-year-old Gerta Natovich and her 95-year-old husband, Moses, opened the doors to us. They told us that they met before the war in Poland, but in the summer of 1942 their families were sent to different concentration camps. “I was sent to Auschwitz, and Moses was sent to forced labor in Dresden,” Gerta continues her story. She survived the war and went to university in Krakow. “But I decided to interrupt my studies and go to Israel. I left Nice on the same ship with illegal immigrants. I knew that Moses’ sister lived in Jerusalem.” After the war, Moses returned to Krakow and first of all began to look for Hertha, but learned that she had gone to Israel. “And I did the same as she did: I boarded the ship. But I was less fortunate: the British did not allow us to reach the country and landed us in Cyprus.” During the eight months that he stayed in Cyprus, they wrote each other a hundred love letters. Finally, in the spring of 1947, he returned to Jerusalem. “And we got married right away,” they say in one voice.

North of Tel Aviv, in the city of Kfar Sava, we met 92-year-old Yehuda and his wife, Judith. They met as children in the Czechoslovak town of Samorin. Brother Judith was best friend Yehuda and his brother. At the beginning of the war, Yehuda was sent to a Hungarian labor camp, but his family did not yet realize the full danger of the situation. Yehuda's mother once said to Judith: “I know that you will become my daughter-in-law, but I do not know which of my sons you will marry.” Yehuda fled the camp and hid in the forests until the liberation of Czechoslovakia. At the end of the war, he returned to his hometown, began looking for his family, and realized that he was left alone. Judith, who ended up in Auschwitz at age 17, saw with her own eyes how the Nazis took her parents and one of her brothers to the gas chamber. She was the only survivor of those members of her family who ended up in the camp. “I was returning to my homeland in search of some distant relative in a horse-drawn cart. And suddenly I saw my brother and his friend - Yehuda... and then it began new story. We never parted again, we have one heart and one soul between us.” “Mom didn’t get to see this, but her prediction came true,” Yehuda adds in a sad voice.

extracurricular activity

« ANOTHER PAGE OF HISTORY - THE HOLOCAUST"

“ANOTHER PAGE OF HISTORY - THE HOLOCAUST”

Goals:

Formation of tolerant consciousness, historical thinking and sympathy for the victims of genocide;

Forming interest in little-studied pages of the history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War using the example of the history of the Holocaust;

Raising students' understanding of the dangers of xenophobia, neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism.

Objectives of the event:

Learning the lessons of the Holocaust to cultivate a tolerant consciousness;

Formation of thinking based on the moral values ​​of civil society;

Expanding student knowledge on the topic “Memory of the Holocaust - the path to tolerance.”

Form of conduct : Extracurricular activity.

Plan:

Introduction.

Opening remarks teachers.

Student presentations including questions on the topic.

Generalization of the topic.

Quiz.

Bottom line.

"Remembrance of the Holocaust is necessary,

so that our children will never be victims,

executioners or indifferent observers."

I. Bauer

Introduction:

Today our event will be held under the theme “Another page of history - the Holocaust.” We will remember what you know, and perhaps someone will learn new facts from the history of World War II and the Great Patriotic War using the example of the history of the Holocaust.

- Who knows what the Holocaust is ?

(HOLOCAUST (holocaust) (English holocaust, from the Greek holokaustos - burned whole), a generalized figurative concept denoting the death of a significant part of the Jewish population of Europe during its persecution by the Nazis and their accomplices in Germany and in the territories it captured in 1933-1945. )

Teacher's introduction:

You correctly defined the word Holocaust. But do we realize to the fullest the reason that the killing of man by man has again acquired such gigantic force as during the Second World War? The world of the Holocaust still exists today, because the Holocaust is not a purely Jewish issue. Genocide, racism, nationalism can affect any people.

Understand the causes of modern genocide, comprehend world history in the twentieth century, it is impossible to stop the resurgent fascism without knowledge of the history of the Holocaust.

Holocaust - from Holocaust, which in Greek means "burnt offering" - designation massacres Jews in 1933 - 1945 in Europe. As L. Koval said: “The Holocaust is the tip on the arrow of anti-Semitism, whittled over centuries...”.

In the course of studying the world and national history V school curriculum There is no place for the Holocaust. Therefore, we, understanding the relevance of the problem, its moral meaning and educational objectives, decided to hold an event on this topic.

The tragedy of the Holocaust is not only part of Jewish history; this is part world history. A conversation about the Catastrophe that befell the Jewish people during the Second World War is also a conversation about the problems of modern civilization, about its diseases, about the danger that threatens it.

Understanding the Holocaust is possible only in a broad historical context, in connection with those events, processes and phenomena that made possible the massive and targeted extermination of an entire people.

It is very important that you, who are almost unfamiliar with the history of the Jewish people and with the peculiarities of Jewish culture, recognize the uniqueness of the Holocaust; but at the same time, in no case should we downplay the tragedy of other peoples who suffered from fascism. I believe that at our event you should learn the following facts and ideas.

During World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators killed approximately six million Jews—a third of the nation. It wasn't just murder huge number people, but an attempt to destroy Jewry as such. The Nazis' racial theories became the justification for genocide; Jews were declared an "anti-race", "subhuman". The catastrophe differs from other cases of mass murder of people known to history, primarily not in the number of those killed, but in the villainous intention to destroy all Jews (“Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims of Nazism” - E. Wiesel), in the scale of planning of the crimes , in terms of the sophistication of the murders.

You should also know the names of places that became symbols of the tragedy of the Jewish people: Babi Yar in Kyiv, Yanovsky camp in Lviv, Treblinka, Ponary, Majdanek, Auschwitz, etc.

Definitely necessary with Jewish armed resistance (uprisings in ghettos, camps, participation in the underground, partisan movement), about Jewish heroes, soldiers of the armies of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.

Teacher :

For our event, students prepared a short material about the Holocaust. Let's give them the floor.

1 student:

Anti-Jewish policy of Nazi Germany (1933-1939)

Anti-Semitic ideology was the basis of the program of the National Socialist Party of Germany (NSDAP), adopted in 1920. After coming to power in January 1933, Hitler pursued a consistent policy of state anti-Semitism. Its first victim was the Jewish community of Germany, numbering more than 500 thousand people. The “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question in Germany, and later in the Nazi-occupied states, involved several stages. The first of them (1933-39) consisted of forcing Jews to emigrate through legislative measures, as well as propaganda, economic and physical actions against the Jewish population of Germany.

On April 1, 1933, the Nazis organized a nationwide “boycott of Jewish stores and goods.” 10 days later, a Decree was adopted defining the status of “non-Aryan”, which was assigned to Jews.

They were expelled from civil service, from schools and universities, medical institutions, funds mass media, army and judicial institutions. Nazi propaganda successfully created the image of Jews as an “internal and external enemy” responsible for all the country’s ills. On May 10, 1933, the mass burning books written by "non-Aryans".

Adopted in September 1935 at the congress Nazi Party in Nuremberg, the laws “On Citizens of the Reich” and “Protection of German Honor and German Blood,” as well as amendments to them adopted two months later, legally formalized the deprivation of German Jews of all political and civil rights. Subsequent legislative acts forced Jewish owners of enterprises and firms to hand them over to the “Aryans.” Men and women with non-Jewish names were required to write “Israel” or “Sarah” on their passports.

Held on July 5, 1938 in the French city of Evian-les-Bains international conference on the problems of Jewish refugees showed that not a single Western country is ready to accept the Jews of Germany. A symbol of indifference to their fate was the steamship St. Louis with Jewish refugees on board, which was not allowed into the territorial waters of first Cuba and then the United States.

In November 1938, the world was shocked by the events of Kristallnacht, organized by the Gestapo in response to the murder of a German diplomat in Paris, committed after the forced deportation of 15 thousand Jews to Poland. On the night of November 9–10, all 1,400 synagogues in Germany were burned or destroyed, Jewish homes, shops, and schools were looted. 91 Jews were killed, several thousand were wounded, tens of thousands were sent to concentration camps.

An indemnity of 1 billion marks was imposed on the German Jewish community “for the damage caused.” On January 24, 1939, Goering issued the order “On urgent measures to accelerate Jewish emigration from Germany." In total, on the eve of World War II, over 300 thousand Jews left Germany. Faster rates of emigration were prevented high degree the assimilation of German Jews, the impossibility of mass emigration not only to the territory of Palestine, which was under the British mandate and disinterested in Jewish settlers, but also to other states of the world.

Question:

- What was the anti-Jewish policy of Nazi Germany?

Answer:

- To the non-Jewish people :

It was forbidden to have any kind of relationship with Jews, even any simple conversation between a non-Jew and a Jew was prohibited, it was forbidden to sell, exchange or give foodstuffs or goods in general to Jews, and to trade with Jews in general.

The German police are ordered to relentlessly suppress any communication between Jews and non-Jews. Those who disobey were severely punished ".

- Hitler pursues a consistent policy of state anti-Semitism. This is forcing Jews to emigrate through legislative measures, as well as propaganda, economic and physical actions against the Jewish population of Germany.

Question:

What does the status of “non-Aryan” mean?

Answer:

- They were expelled from public service, schools and universities, medical institutions, the media, the army and the judiciary. Nazi propaganda, not unsuccessfully, created the image of Jews as an “internal and external enemy”, guilty of all the troubles of the countries; amendments were adopted to deprive the Jews of Germany of all political and civil rights.

2nd student:

- “Final Solution” to the Jewish Question in Europe.

After the capture of Poland, more than 2 million Jews of this country were under the control of the Nazis. On September 21, 1939, an order was issued by the head of the RSHA, R. Heydrich, on the creation of special Jewish quarters (ghettos) in cities near large railway stations. Jews from the surrounding countryside also moved there. The first ghetto was created in Petrokow Tribunalski in October 1939. The largest ghetto in Europe was located in Warsaw (created at the end of 1940). Here, 500 thousand Jews - a third of the city's population - were housed on streets that made up no more than 4.5% of Warsaw's territory. Lack of food, disease and epidemics, and overwork led to enormous mortality. However, this rate of extermination of Jews did not suit the Nazis. At a conference prepared by Heydrich and Eichmann held on January 20, 1942 in the Berlin suburb of Van Zee, a death sentence was imposed on 11 million Jews from 33 European countries. To destroy them, 6 death camps were created in Poland (in Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Auschwitz). The main one (using gas chambers and crematoria) was the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp built near the city of Auschwitz, where over 1 million 100 thousand Jews from 27 countries died.

In death camps and ghettos in the territory Eastern Europe(including the occupied regions of the USSR) 200 thousand Jews of Germany were exterminated; 65 thousand - Austria; 80 thousand - Czech Republic; 110 thousand - Slovakia; 83 thousand - France; 65 thousand - Belgium; 106 thousand - the Netherlands; 165 thousand - Romania; 60 thousand - Yugoslavia; 67 thousand - Greece; 350 thousand - Hungary.

A significant number of civilians in all these countries who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators were Jews. The most significant victims (over 2 million people) were suffered by the Jewish community of Poland (in addition, more than 1 million former Polish Jews died in the territories that were transferred to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1939).

Conversation on the material listened to:

Question:

What was the “final solution” to the Jewish question in Europe?

Answer:

- Jews of all Nazi-occupied countries were subject to registration, they were required to wear armbands or stripes with six-pointed stars, pay indemnities and hand over jewelry. They were stripped of all civilian and political rights, were imprisoned in ghettos, concentration camps or deported.

3rd student:

The Holocaust on the territory of the USSR.

The systematic extermination of the Jewish civilian population by the Nazis began (for the first time in Europe) immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union.

The thesis about the fight against “Jewish Bolshevism,” with the help of which Soviet Jews were identified with the communists as the main enemies of the Reich, became one of the leitmotifs of Nazi propaganda, including in periodicals for residents of the occupied Soviet territories.

Any acts of resistance to the occupiers in the first months of the war were declared “Jewish actions,” and the victims of retaliatory terror were predominantly Jews (this was the motivation for the reprisals against the Jews of Kyiv, where several tens of thousands of Jews were killed at Babi Yar on September 29-30, 1941, and Odessa).

The Einsatzgruppen exterminated all Jews in the countryside, as well as in cities - in the zone of the German military administration (east of the Dnieper). Destruction was often carried out in the very populated areas, in front of other residents. Several hundred ghettos were created in the civil administration zone, the largest of which in Minsk, Kaunas and Vilnius existed until mid-1943. They were isolated from the rest of the population by barbed wire, internal self-government was carried out by “Judenrats” (councils of elders), appointed by the Nazis to collect indemnities, labor organization and epidemic prevention, as well as food distribution. The periodic executions of ghetto prisoners, and then the liquidation of all their inhabitants (with the exception of several thousand specialists transferred to work camps) indicate that the Nazis viewed the ghetto as an intermediate stage in the “final solution” of the Jewish question.

Only in the territory of Transnistria, captured by Romanian troops, about 70 thousand ghetto prisoners survived. More than 2 million Jews living on the territory of the USSR on June 22, 1941, died at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices (already in the first days of the war, the Nazis inspired Jewish pogroms by local nationalists in Lithuania and Western Ukraine).

Conversation on the material listened to:

Question:

- What groups exterminated Jews on the territory of the USSR?

Answer:

- The destruction involved 4 SS Einsatzgruppen - “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”, assigned to the corresponding groups of Wehrmacht troops, SS police battalions and Wehrmacht rear units, local collaborators, allies of Nazi Germany.

Question:

How did the extermination of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen proceed?

Answer:

- The Einsatzgruppen exterminated all Jews in the countryside, as well as in cities - in the zone of the German military administration (east of the Dnieper). Destruction was often carried out in the settlements themselves, in front of other residents. Several hundred ghettos were created in the civil administration zone, the largest of which were in Minsk, Kaunas and Vilnius.

4 student:

Jewish Resistance.

The symbol of the Jewish Resistance was the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, which began on April 19, 1943. It was the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Nazism and Heroes of the Resistance, celebrated annually in all Jewish communities of the world, is dedicated to its anniversary. The uprising lasted several weeks, almost all of its participants died with weapons in their hands. The uprising and escape of several hundred prisoners from the Sobibor death camp, organized by the Soviet Jewish prisoner of war A. Pechersky, was successful. Underground groups that organized armed resistance, as well as prisoner escapes and supplying partisans with weapons and medicine, existed in the Minsk, Kaunas, Bialystok, and Vilna ghettos. About 30 thousand Jews fought in the forests of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine as part of partisan detachments and groups. Half a million Soviet Jews fought the Nazis on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War.

Holocaust Memorials.

Conversation on the material listened to:

Question:

- What became the symbol of Jewish resistance?

Answer:

- The symbol of the Jewish Resistance was the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, which began on April 19, 1943.

Question:

What Holocaust memorials do you know?

Answer:

- In memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazism, memorials and museums have been erected in many countries around the world. Among them are the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem (1953), the Documentation Center and Memorial in Paris (1956), the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam (1958), the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington (1994), the Museum in Memory of 1.5 Million Jews children in Hiroshima.

Well done guys. You listened carefully to your guys’ messages and were able to answer the questions posed.

Teacher's summary of the topic:

To this day, people preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

The UN General Assembly proclaimed the day of liberation.

On the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust, adopted a resolution condemning the Holocaust:

Leaders and representatives of more than 40 states who attended the memorial ceremony in, among whom was, strongly condemned the Holocaust, and ".

An important point in preserving the memory of people of the Holocaust and the need to prevent such a tragedy in the future is the artistic understanding of the Holocaust in literature, cinema, music, and fine arts. This topic is explored most emotionally in.

The first film to talk about the Holocaust was the Polish film "" (1946).

And now I will ask you guys to answer the following quiz questions in writing:

Quiz questions:

Do young people today need to know about the Holocaust? If so, why?

How is the Holocaust different from genocide?

If you were asked to create a plan for a Holocaust exhibition, what sections would you highlight in it? What exhibits would you suggest exhibiting in this museum?

What is the role of Holocaust museums in the modern world?

Heinrich Heine once said: “Where books are burned, people will be burned.” What historical experience allowed him to come to such a statement? What do you see as the connection between the fate of books and the fate of people?

Name the main stages of the anti-Jewish policy of the Nazi Reich and the most important propaganda activities of the Nazi leadership.

Thanks to what circumstances were the Nazis able to carry out their plans for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”? Why were orders to implement this decision, coming from above, unquestioningly carried out at all levels and stages?

What was the purpose of the Einsatzgruppen? What methods did these groups use to achieve their goals?

The Jews in the ghetto behaved differently: some cared only about not violating the established rules and thereby winning the favor of their superiors; some of the ghetto prisoners tried to behave according to their ethical standards and in accordance with their religious feelings. There were also those who fought for their human dignity with weapons in their hands. Try to look inside yourself: how would you behave in the cruel conditions of ghettos and death camps. What stereotype of behavior would be most characteristic of you if you were in the place of prisoners of ghettos and death camps?

Remember the times in your life when your friend was insulted for belonging to a particular nationality. How did you feel about this? What are your actions?

What do you know about the Jewish resistance during the Great Patriotic War from literature, cinema, television and radio programs?

It is often said that the Holocaust is a dire warning to all contemporaries. What does the Holocaust warn us about?

Result of the event:

The further away the events of the Jewish Holocaust of 1933-1945 are from us, the more courage is required to remember the death of six million Jews and millions of other people killed because they were Gypsies or Slavs, dissidents or prisoners of war...

Understanding the Holocaust as a unique phenomenon, historians at the same time try to determine the role of the Jewish tragedy in the fate of humanity, to find out how such monstrous atrocities could have been committed, what parallels can be seen between what happened in Germany in the middle of the twentieth century and what is happening Today.

When comprehending the tragic experience of the past, one must return to the trail of evil, realizing that the roots of the phenomena that led to the Jewish Holocaust have not yet been uprooted. In most countries of the world, the Holocaust is perceived not only as a tragedy of Jews who died as a result of a carefully developed and carried out plan of mass extermination, but also as a warning.

That is why in many countries around the world the day of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising - April 6 - is celebrated as the Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Nazism (in Israel, Yom Shoah). That is why hundreds of centers for the study of the Holocaust have been created, monuments to victims of the Holocaust have been erected, and Museums are operating that present documentary evidence of the Holocaust of European Jews and material evidence of terrible crimes.

Studying the terrible past is not only preserving the memory of the dead, but also one of the conditions for the survival of modern man.