Hello. I am interested in history, particularly World War II and public (also Jewish) relations and lives during these days. Lately I've been fighting the lack of common sense in my family, because they decided to switch to YouTube videos with yellow subtitles instead of books. Let me write down a sentence I'd love to slam dunk: "The Holocaust may have been entirely or partially planned by Jews, since the elites weren't wiped out. Perhaps they planned their extermination to create Israel after the war." Is there proof that "higher ranked" Jews were in fact a subject to similar conditions like normal people? I mean ghettos, concentration camps, executions from the hands of Einsatzgruppen etc. Earlier asked questions and answers to them are helpful, but I'd love specific informations about rabbis, musicians and artists, politicians, scientists etc. Specific people like Janusz Korczak or Franciszka Mann may not be enough, since they are singular examples - are there documented transports of whole groups of scientists or politicians etc?
First of all, here is an older answer of mine dealing with direct, German-produced, undeniable evidence for the Holocaust and here is the Monday Methods on Holocaust Denial. Arguing with deniers is always a bit of a wasted effort I feel since it is my as well as other's experience that one hardly ever succeeds in convincing them. After all, when you do not even share a premise – that facts are facts – arguing indeed becomes like nailing a pudding to the wall.
Secondly, while there were no specific transports consisting only of artists, politicians and so forth, traditional social elites were as persecuted and experienced the same conditions and level of horrendous treatment as normal people did. While I'll get to a broader discussion of that in a second, one thing that is important here is the specific fate of the German-Jewish community. German Jews experienced a longer period of social ostracizing and state-persecution than other Jewish communities in Europe for they – obviously – lived longer under Nazi rule. At the same time, this also meant that they experienced persecution at a time when genocide was not yet the political goal of the Nazi regime.
From 1933 to about the start of the war (and ultimately ending altogether in 1941), the Nazis' preeminent policy was voluntary and forced emigration. Meaning that the goal of persecution measures and so forth was to encourage Jews to leave Germany by all measures available to them. While the Nazis created whole schemes that used money confiscated from rich German Jews to finance the emigration of poorer German Jews, the period of (forced) emigration was one during which German Jews with either financial or social standing had a somewhat easier time than their poor counter parts; especially when it came to other countries allowing them to immigrate. Scientists like Einstein or Sigmund Freud found more open arms and easier entrance into the US and Great Britain than a Jewish grocer or shoe maker.
I have described the evolution of the Holocaust and anti-Jewish policy in greater detail in this answer but to sum it up quickly: The period between the start of the war and the decision to murder all of the Jews of Europe wholesale at the turn of the year 1941 to 1942 was characterized by a whole slew of plans of how to rid Europe of Jews – most famously the Madagascar Plan – that already carried genocidal overtones. It was also characterized by the increasing ghettoization of Jewish populations under Nazi control, most famously in Poland but also including the German Jewish population.
To this end, the Theresienstadt Ghetto/Concentration Camp came into existence. In order to avoid public protests – I go into this more here – Theresienstadt was created as a Ghetto for Jewish-Germans of prominence and – also critically – Jewish-German veterans of the First World War. The Nazis frequently called it a "Ghetto for the prominent" and although conditions in Theresienstadt belied that fact, being as brutal and unrelenting as in other camps, many of the prisoners were what one can consider famous musicians, artists, politicians and so forth.
The reason I mention all this is because the history of Theresienstadt comes closest to what you are asking about, for all the prominence of the prisoners of the ghetto – which consisted of among others: Esther Adolphine, Sigmund Freud's sister; famous actor Eugen Burg; Robert Desnos, the French Surrealist poet; Alfred Flatow, German Olympic gymnast; Rudolf Karel, Czech composer; Emil Kolben, Czech industrialist; Clementine Krämer, writer and social worker; Georg Alexander Pick, Austrian mathematician; Mathilde Sussin, actress; and many more – were not spared from deportation. Starting already in 1942 and continuing until 1944 the German authorities deported over 46,750 Jews from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, among them some of the most prominent prisoners of the camp. If even noteable and famous Germans, including veterans who had fought in WWI and were highly decorated in some cases were not save from deportation and death, no Jew in Europe would ever be.
And that was definitely the case. The Einsatzgruppen did not care very much about whom the shot anyways but where there remained a semblance of Jewish social organization – in form of the Jewish councils in the Ghettos – they were far from save either. I go further into this here but where Ghettos were liquidated, meaning its inmates deported to a death camp and/or shot, nobody remained save and members of the Jewish councils were included in such measures.
Basically, in response to the claim you posted: Prominence did not save Jews from being killed by the Nazis. Such a claim has no basis. In fact cases, most prominent among them Theresienstadt as an institution itself, show quite the opposite.