General Certificate of Secondary Education
History
Controlled Assessment Task
Unit 3: Investigative Study
Nazi Treatment of the Jewish Community
[GHT31]
VALID FROM SEPTEMBER 2016 – MAY 2017
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
Candidates must use all ten sources provided. Use sources A, B, C and D in your response
to Question 1. You must analyse and evaluate Sources E, F, G, H, I and J in your response to
Question 2.
INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES
Controlled Assessment is marked out of 50. Question 1 is worth 15 marks and Question 2 is
worth 35 marks.
Quality of written communication will be assessed in both questions.
You should aim to write approximately 2000 words in total.
Candidates’ work to be submitted May 2017
Controlled Assessment Tasks must comply with the Regulations as detailed in the Subject Specification.
NB: Some Controlled Assessment Tasks instructions may constitute more than 1 page.
Please check you have all the information you need to complete the task if printing from a computer.
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Controlled Assessment Task: Nazi Treatment of the Jewish Community
1
Study Sources A, B, C and D.
Using Sources A, B, C and D, and your own knowledge, explain how the Allies found
out about the Nazi persecution of the Jewish community in the period 1939–1945.
[15]
Source A
From an internet website, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org, commenting on the
Holocaust.
Information about the mass murder of Jews began to reach the Allies by June 1941.
Early sources of information included German police reports intercepted by British
intelligence, local eyewitness accounts and escaped Jews reporting to underground,
Soviet or neutral sources. In May 1942, reports of a Nazi plan to murder all Jews, including
details on methods, numbers and locations had reached Allied leaders from sources such
as the Jewish underground movement in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Source B
From a telegram sent by Gerhart Riegner, Secretary of the World Jewish Congress
in Geneva, to American and British diplomats, 8 August 1942.
A plan has been discussed in Hitler’s headquarters. All Jews in countries controlled by
Germany, about three and a half to four million people, should be exterminated in order to
solve the Jewish problem in Europe. Action is planned for the autumn.
Source C
From The Auschwitz Protocols, published on 26 November 1944 by the US War
Refugee Board.
The victims are crowded into the gas chamber and shots are often fired to huddle them
together. When everybody is inside, the heavy doors are closed. SS men with gas masks
climb on the roof, open the traps and shake down a powder out of cans labelled: “For
use against vermin.” After three minutes, everyone in the chamber is dead. The gassing
capacity at Auschwitz-Birkenau is six thousand people daily.
Source D
From a speech by Adam Rotfeld, Foreign Minister of Poland, at a ceremony to mark
the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27 January 2005.
The Polish resistance movement kept alerting the Allies to the situation. By the end of
1942, thanks to Jan Karski, and also by other means, the governments of the
United Kingdom and the United States were informed about what was going on in
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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2
Study Sources E, F, G, H, I and J.
Using Sources E, F, G, H, I and J, and your own knowledge, how far would you agree
[35]
with the view in Source E that ‘guilt for the Holocaust lies with Hitler’?
Total [50]
Source E
From Hitler and Germany by B.J. Elliott, published in 1968.
Adolf Hitler must be a leading candidate for the title of the ‘most evil man who ever
lived’. Although he received help to carry out his monstrous plans from thousands of SS
members, the Gestapo and Nazi Party officials, and had the support of those whose votes
put him into power, guilt for the Holocaust lies with Hitler.
Source F
From the testimony of Karl Adolf Eichmann during his trial in 1961.
I am not guilty. It was my misfortune to become involved in these atrocities. It was not
my wish to kill people. I was only being obedient, doing my official duties and honouring
my oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. I did not want to persecute Jews but obedience was
demanded. I am guilty only of obeying orders.
Source G
From an article by Alan Farmer in the History Review magazine, September 2007.
Hitler’s defence team would surely have argued that the Holocaust was not just Hitler’s
work, Himmler was the real planner, along with Heydrich, his right hand man. SS members
in the camps were fanatical Nazis, German soldiers carried out horrendous massacres with
enthusiasm and ordinary Germans – civil servants, railway workers, policemen – were all
involved. Guilt for the Holocaust was thus not Hitler’s alone.
Source H
From an interview with a former guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau, published in
Der Spiegel, August 2014.
I’m not guilty for what happened. I was conscripted by Hitler and sent to
Auschwitz-Birkenau. How was I supposed to get away from there? If I had attempted to
desert, I would have been shot. Nobody could leave. You couldn’t complain, it wouldn’t
have changed anything.
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Source I
From an article in The Guardian, 26 January 2005.
The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, yesterday declared that ordinary Germans
were responsible for the Holocaust. Mr Schröder said that the horrors of the concentration
camps could not be explained by merely blaming the “demon Hitler”. “The evil of Nazism
did not come out of nowhere,” he said. “One thing is clear: Nazi beliefs were driven by the
people and carried out by the people.”
Source J
A cartoon called It wasn’t us guv! by Fritz Behrendt, published on 8 April 1961. It
attacks the defence put forward by Karl Adolf Eichmann when put on trial for crimes
against humanity.
“It was the others who were guilty.”
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