Poland day 4: Lublin and Majdonek:

After a nice long 4.5 hour drive, we finally arrived in the lovely city of Lublin. Lublin was a city that contained 40,000 Jews before the war, about one third of the population. Lublin, like Krakow was a central place for Jewish culture. There were about 100 private prayer homes, 12 synagogues, 3 cemeteries, a Jewish hospital, an orphanage, there were even newspapers in Yiddish. Additionally, Jews had their own representation in the town council and many commercial and social organizations.
However, once the Germans took over, everything changed. On December 1, 1939, the Jews were ordered to wear a Jewish star for the first time, and from there the persecution continued.
Immediately, the Germans created a hard core where the codes of daily life went from being freedom to live, trade, go to school and practice whatever tradition you want were all perfectly allowed, into greed, competition,hierarchy, survival of the fittest,racial purity, conformity and fear, creating a dog eat dog world. From daily life on the street, to life in the ranks of the S.S, to life in the camps, these codes dictated the way of life for everyone.One example where we can see just how present things like competition were, we can look at the S.S men. Hitler would give many of them the same job, and they would need to compete. All the time, competition was everywhere.
The first place we saw was the Gestapo headquarters, pictured to the right.
As a result of these codes, both the public, S.S, Jews, Polish and everyone involved became desencatized towards seeings these things actually carried out. One thing that was the topic of our sichot throughout the day was how do you create this hardcore society, and what does that mean? The question was highly debated. In order to create a hardcore like the one created in Aryan Lublin, you need to force people to conform, and make them feel as though they are part of a bigger picture. That is exactly what happened. For Hitler, his way of creating the Hardcore was a simple process. Starting with political propoganda explaining why the Jews are nothing,using things like economics and genetic purity. As he gained support, things like the Hitler Youth came into play. Then was the S.A, previous to the S.S. The S.A were basically thugs appointed by Hitler to roam around and beat people up until they would follow what the new norms were to be. As they gained more power, Hitler had his famous night of slaughter, where he killed all the S.A, because they were gaining to much power. Then came the S.S, and Jews were exterminated. It was as simple as that. The night peula focused on this discussion.