Chaim Kaplan
Chaim Aron Kaplan was born in Horodyszcze in Poland in 1880. He studied at Yeshiva of Mir and at the Government Pedagogical Institute in Vilna. He moved to Warsaw in 1902 where he was the founder and principal of a Hebrew elementary school. He liked writing and started writing a personal diary in 1933 which contained information about the events which played out during the Holocaust, his opinions on them and other Jewish peoples’ stories in Warsaw. He was forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto which was the largest Jewish ghetto in occupied-Poland during the Holocaust. Chaim Kaplan was then believed to have been sent to the Treblinka death camp along with his wife where they later died.
In 1902, Chaim Kaplan opened a Hebrew elementary school in Warsaw. He was the principal of the school for 40 years.1 Chaim was passionate about teaching his students Hebrew as a spoken language using methods which some questioned and were opposed to. He was very involved in Jewish activities in the community, such as being a part of the Society for Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw, as well as contributing to numerous Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers and magazines.
Chaim Kaplan was raised and lived his whole life as a Jew. He grew up experiencing the hatred towards Jewish people and this hatred increased immensely during the war. In his diary on March 10th 1940 he writes things describing the hatred from the population aimed at Jews with common stereotypes such as “The Jew is filthy”, “The Jew is a swindler and evil”, “The Jew is the enemy of Germany”, “The Jew is Satan”.3
During Chaim Kaplan’s life he believed it was important to share the Jewish culture and customs with the world. He did this by writing numerous publications such as a book called Pezurai in 19372 about the Hebrew language and Jewish education. This dedication to writing helped him immensely when he started writing a personal diary in 1933. It allowed him to record detailed accounts of things which happened in the ghettos with “amazing regularity.”2.
On June 16th, 1942 Chaim mentions that “The process of physical destruction of Polish Jewry has already begun. Not a day goes by that the Nazis do not conduct a murder”.1 Showing how he was aware of the daily atrocities occurring in the Ghetto. Jews were forced to work and live in unbearable conditions along with the constant threat of death looming over them as the brutal Nazi/SS policemen patrolled the streets of the ghettos, choosing their next victim with sometimes no reason at all.
In his final diary entry on August 4th 19422 before he was sent to Treblinka death camp, Kaplan wrote “I am constantly bothered by the thought: If my life ends, what will become of my diary?”.2 He was so devoted to preserving an accurate record of the atrocities which occurred during the Holocaust in the ghettos, that it was the last and only thing he was concerned about. He was more worried about what would happen to his diary and that his work would “be in vain”2 than the fate of his own life.
Actions Chaim Kaplan took as a way of fighting back was by surviving long enough to be able to tell the story of the horrors which occurred in the ghettos. He did this by keeping track of everything that occurred in numerous diaries. Kaplan got his Jewish friend named Rubinsztejin who worked outside of the ghetto to smuggle the diaries out of the ghetto during the end of the war, so they could be preserved in full by a Polish person. This diary provided first-person accounts of what actually happened during the Holocaust from the perspective of a Jewish person imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto himself. By writing the diary it meant that his story and others who he wrote about will live on forever. There is proof that what was said happened, actually happened, and the Nazis cannot deny it.
Another action Chaim took to fight back against the Nazi’s was through cultural resistance. This was something that the Nazis could not take away from the Jews as it was a mental and spiritual thing which was always with them. Chaim writes on October 2nd, 1940 on New Year’s Eve that the Jew’s poured their hearts out to the God of Israel in whispered prayers3. They prayed regularly in secret that the horrors which they were experiencing daily would end, although some lost hope wondering how their God could let such things happen to them. Although, the majority of people remained faithful and that allowed them to pull through and survive.
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany. He joined the Austrian National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the SS in 1932. He was brought up in a middle-class protestant family and due to him being a poor student and his dark looks, he was nicknamed “the little Jew” which fuelled his despise of Jewish people from a young age. He was raised as a German surrounded by people who held anti-Jewish views in an anti-Semitic environment. When he was 13, Eichmann was named in a local newspaper as a member of a gang who abused a Jewish classmate4. So, from a young age he grew up to hate Jews just like all those around him, which allowed him to view the Jewish population as “less than” and helped him carry out the horrific acts he did during the Holocaust without remorse.
In August 1934, Eichmann was ranked as a SS-Scharführer (Sergeant) and joined the Security Service main office. In 1937, he conducted an inspection tour of Palestine in order to promote “Zionistic emigration of Jews from Germany by all (available) means” . Which would later serve very useful as preparation of the Holocaust. In March 19384, Eichmann conducted a raid on the Jewish Community offices. Eichmann then organised a Central Office for Jewish Emigration which opened in Vienna on August 20th 19384. This office aided the emigration of 110,000 Austrian Jews4 in less than a year. Eichmann led the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to ensure that the goal of a “Jew-free” Germany would be effectively achieved. He discovered that it was easier to deport the Jews rather than emigrating them, which lead to the forced deportation of all Jews in Germany and some other European countries to the ghettos and then concentration camps.
The first attempt of mass deportation was conducted by Eichmann was held shortly after World War 2 started and this consisted of the deportation of 3,500 Jews from Vienna and Moravia to Nisko although these did not work out due to change in German policy and other problems. However, Eichmann impressed his superiors which led to him being known as one of the most important Nazi’s involved in the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. He was also regarded as “the expert on forced emigration” in SS circles.4 By 1939, Eichmann was in charge of handling the forced deportations of Europe’s Jews to ghettos and camps in Poland. In October6, he was appointed as a special advisor on the emigration of Jewish and Polish people.
In 1941, Eichmann took part in discussions at the Wannsee conference involving the elimination of the Jewish population as he was appointed Transportation Administrator, which meant he was to be in charge of transporting Europe’s Jews to the ghettos and then killing centres. From April 1944 to July 1944, Eichmann and his men successfully managed to deport 440,000 Hungarian Jews4.
Actions Eichmann took during the Holocaust involving the ghettos was the deportation of 1.5 million or more Jews and less superior races from all over Europe to the ghettos and concentration camps. He did this because from a young age he held anti-Semitic values which led him to think of Jews during the Holocaust as objects not people. In fact, on a failed attempt in 1944 Eichmann tried to trade the lives of one million Jews for 10,000 trucks4, showing how he did not see the Jews as human at all. Eichmann, like most other Nazi leaders and Germans at the time, despised the Jewish population due to beliefs that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” by the Jews4 after the defeat in World War 1. Germany blamed the Jewish population for losing the war and impacting Germany’s future. Due to all of the publicity around Jews being less than human, that’s what German’s began to believe which enabled the Nazi party to carry out the Final Solution.