Transcript Document 7190132

The Holocaust
Holocaust (hol·o·caust): n 1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life,
especially by fire
2. Greek word that means burnt whole or consumed by fire
Pre-War
Jews were living in every country in Europe
before the Nazis came into power in 1933
 Approximately 9 million Jews
 Poland and the Soviet Union had the largest
populations
 Jews could be found in all walks of life: farmers,
factory workers, business people, doctors,
teachers, and craftsmen

Anti-Semitism
Jews have faced prejudice and
discrimination for over 2,000 years.
 Jews were scapegoats for many problems.
For example, people blamed Jews for the
“Black Death” that killed thousands in
Europe during the Middle Ages.

Anti-Semitism
Russian in the late 1800s - the government
incited attacks on Jewish neighborhoods called
pogroms. Mobs murdered Jews and looted their
homes and stores.
 Hitler idolized an Austrian mayor named Karl
Lueger who used antisemitism as a way to get
votes in his political campaign.

PROGRESSION OF DISCRIMINATION
TOWARDS JEWS
The NAZI party and Adolf Hitler seized
power in 1933 and slowly began their
program against the Jews of Germany
 In 1933 there were 566,000 Jews living in
Germany.
 Each new year in Germany led to harsher
policies directed towards the Jews.

Used antisemitism as a
tool relied on the ideas of
racial science to portray
Jews as a race instead of
a religion.
 Nazi teachers began to
apply the “principles” of
racial science by
measuring skull size and
nose length and recording
students’ eye color and
hair to determine whether
students belonged the the
“Aryan race.”

The Nazis used
propaganda to
promote their antiSemitic ideas.
 One such book was
the children’s book,

The Poisonous
Mushroom.
Persecution
The Nazi plan for dealing with the “Jewish
Question” evolved in three steps:
1. Expulsion: Get them out of Germany
2. Containment: Put them all together in
one place – namely ghettos
3. “Final Solution”: annihilation
Persecution
Nazis targeted other individuals and groups in
addition to the Jews:
 Gypsies (Sinti and Roma)
 Homosexual men
 Jehovah’s Witness
 Handicapped Germans
 Poles
 Political dissidents (communists)
1933
NAZIS boycott Jewish businesses
 issue decree that defines non-Aryans
 first concentration camps are built
 Dachau - 3/22/33

BADGES OF HATE!
Jews, like all other
German citizens,
were required to carry
identity cards, but
their cards were
stamped with a red
“J.” This allowed
police to easily
identify them.
1935- Nuremberg Race Laws
“Full Jew” =
a are
person
with
Jews
not allowed
to: 3 Jewish
grandparents. Those with less were
Mischlinge.
Marry or have sex hire Aryan women
with Aryans
as maids
have rights of
citizenship
1939 – KRISTALLNACHT
Night of Broken Glass
 Jewish stores, shops
and synagogues
burned down
 Took place because a
German official was
killed in Paris by a
Jew
 November 9, 1939

Kristallnacht
Photo credits: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
POLAND 1939
Sept. 1, 1939 Nazis
invade Poland
 3.35 million Jews
 Hans Frank becomes
governor of Poland
 Forced labor decree
issued and all Jews
must wear yellow
stars

“I ask nothing of Jews except
that they should disappear”
1940
German Jews are
deported to Poland
 Ghettos of Lodz,
Krakow and Warsaw
are sealed off.
 Total of 600,000 Jews
 These ghettos will be
liquidated starting in
1942

German soldiers rounding up
Jews to be placed in ghettos
Life in the ghettos was hard: food was
rationed; several families often shared a
small space; disease spread rapidly;
heating, ventilation, and sanitation were
limited.
 Many children were orphaned in the
ghettos.

Family being forced into Ghettos
Ghetto Star
Many ghettos were closed by barbed wire or
walls and were guarded by SS or local police.
 Jews sometimes had to use bridges to go over
Aryan streets that ran through the ghetto.

Wannsee Conference
Reinhard Heydrich was ordered to prepare
a “final solution” to the Jewish question
 Heydrich organized a meeting with 15 top
Nazi officials in Berlin = Jan. 20, 1942
 Nazis would attempt to exterminate the
entire Jewish population of Europe, an
estimated 11 million persons

FINAL SOLUTION
“Now judgement has begun and it will
reach its conclusion only when the
knowledge of the Jews has been erased
from the earth!” Nazi Newspaper
 There were 3 phases of the Nazi plan to
wipe out the Jewish population of Europe

Phase 1 = Shooting
Jews were rounded
up and told they were
to be relocated
 They were taken to
the woods and were
shot one by one
 their bodies were
buried in mass graves

Phase 2 = Gas Vans
Jews were rounded
up and told they were
to be relocated in
vans
 The vans were
equipped so that the
van’s exhaust was
piped back into the
van

700,000 Jews killed in Vans
Problems with Phases 1,2
The Nazis encountered several problems
with the executions and gas vans
 First, they were both taking to much time
 Second, resources such as gas and
munitions were becoming scarce
 Third, soldiers involved were beginning to
have psychological problems with what
they were doing.

Phase 3 = The Camps
Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed
up the Final Solution
 there were two different types of camps:
 CONCENTRATION CAMPS
 EXTERMINATION CAMPS
 Jews from all over occupied Europe were
to be brought here.

CONCENTRATION
100 of these in Nazi-occupied Europe
 prisoners used for forced labor
 prisoners usually lasted less than 1/2 year
 communists, homosexuals, criminals,
social-democrats, artists.
 First camp was opened in 1933, right after
Nazis came to power

Prisoners arriving at the camps…
AUSCHWITZ
Started operations in January 1940
(Poland)
 Himmler chose Auschwitz as the place for
the Final Solution
 had 4 gas chambers/crematories by 1943
 mass killings with Zyklon B gas
 commanded by Rudolph Hoess
 recorded 12,000 kills in one day

Entrance to Auschwitz
“Work will set you free”
THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ
ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM
JEWS
TEETH WITH GOLD
PILES OF GLASSES
ZYKLON-B
GAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE
COMPARED TO GAS. DROPPED FROM CEILINGS
MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
Sterilization of men and women
 endurance of pain to high and low
temperatures and pressure
 experiments on twins to increase number
of multiple births to Aryan women
 injections of phenol to kill patients
 Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children
together to make Siamese twins

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
EXTRACTED
HUMAN ORGANS
EXPERIMENTS ON
CHILDREN IN AUSCHWITZ
One of the most famous photos taken during the
Holocaust shows Jewish families arrested by Nazis
during the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland,
and sent to be gassed at Treblinka extermination camp.
Camp Totals
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
killed in camp
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
Auschwitz
Belzec
Chelmo
Crowded Conditions
Even the very young…
Photo credit: German National Archives
Shoes
Nazis sift through the enormous pile of clothing left
behind by the victims of a massacre. (1941)
Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943, exhuming
bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar. Nazis had murdered
over 33,000 Jews in September of 1941.
Survivors in Mauthausen open one of the crematoria
ovens for American troops who are inspecting the
camp.
A warehouse full of shoes and clothing confiscated
from the prisoners and deportees gased upon their
arrival. The Nazis shipped these goods to
Germany.
A mass grave in Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp.
Young survivors
behind a barbed
wire fence in
Buchenwald.
Holocaust Chronology


Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet
troops liberate
Auschwitz. By this
time, an estimated
2,000,000 persons,
including 1,500,000
Jews, have been
murdered there.
April 29, 1945 - U.S.
7th Army liberates
Dachau.
Aftermath
Most prisoners were
emaciated to the
point of being
skeletal.
 Many camps had
dead bodies lying in
piles “like cordwood.”
 Many prisoners died
even after liberation.

Former prisoners of the "little camp" in Buchenwald stare
out from the wooden bunks in which they slept three to a
"bed." Elie Wiesel is pictured in the second row of bunks,
seventh from the left, next to the vertical beam.
Aftermath
Many of the camp prisoners had nowhere
to go, so they became “displaced persons”
(DPs).
 These survivors stayed in DP camps in
Germany, which were organized and run
by the Allies.
 Initially, the conditions were often very
poor in the DP camps.

Aftermath
Jewish displaced persons, eager to leave
Europe, pushed for the founding of a
Jewish state in British-controlled Palestine.
 Zionism-a Jewish homeland. This is what
is now Israeli ( the religious unit… Holy
Land Wars b/w Israelis and Muslims)

Aftermath
The International
Military Tribunal took
place in Nuremberg,
Germany in 1945 and
1946.
 12 prominent Nazis
were sentenced to
death.
 Most claimed that they
were only following
orders, which was
judged to be an invalid
defense.

STATISTICS BY COUNTRY
– 6 million Jews
3,500,000
3,000,000
 1.5 million children under 12
2,500,000
– “Other Undesirables”
2,000,000
1,500,000
 5 million
BEFORE
AFTER
1,000,000
500,000
11 MILLION KILLED
0
POLAND
USSR
HUNGARY GERMANY
Jewish population before, Jewish population after
Holocaust
Where the Germans the only ones?

During WWII
– Japan
– America (Japanese and German POW)
 Rounded up anyone that was Japanese, Japanese
descendent or supporter and placed them in
interment camps
 All German POWs where brought to America and
put into camps (most of which were located in
Texas)
Japanese
interment camps
American POW camps
German POW camps
in the United States
Processing
Write a page talking about how you feel
about the Holocaust and/or about
concentration camps. You can discuss the
ones that were in America or Japan as
well.
 OR
 Draw a political cartoon that shows
German/Jewish tensions and relations.
