Transcript The Holocaust

THE HOLOCAUST
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
 The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews
by the Nazis during World War 2.
 In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that
would be military occupied by Germany during the war.
 By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
 This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of
thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of handicapped
children.
6 MILLION JEWS
11 MILLION PEOPLE (TOTAL)
1933 - 1945
EUROPEAN JEWISH POPULATION IN
1933 WAS 9,508,340
ESTIMATED JEWISH SURVIVORS OF
HOLOCAUST: 3,546,211
THEY WERE SHOT,
STARVED, GASSED
AND BURNED…
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DEFINING THE HOLOCAUST
• HOLOCAUST (Heb., sho'ah) which originally meant a sacrifice totally
burned by fire
• the annihilation of the Jews and other groups of people of Europe
under the Nazi regime during World War II
• GENOCIDE: the systematic
extermination of a nationality or group
• POGROM: An organized and often officially encouraged massacre or
attack on Jews.
COLD HARD FACTS
Casualties of the Holocaust:
• 63% of Jewish population in Europe killed
• 91% of Jewish population in Poland killed
• Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on
Jan. 27, 1945. The Soviets found 836, 255 women’s
dresses, 348, 000 men’s suits, 38, 000 pairs of men’s
shoes and 14, 000 pounds of human hair. But only
7, 650 live prisoners
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WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?
• The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that
there was a struggle for survival between them and "inferior races.
• Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were seen as a
serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race"
and therefore had to be "exterminated.“
• The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I,
for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties
throughout Europe
For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European
country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical
example.
In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge.
In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London.
This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century,
especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population
was very large.
After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War.
Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed.
Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They
turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.
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WHO ELSE WAS TARGETED?
 Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians and others) were also
considered "inferior" and destined to serve as slave labor for
their German masters.
 Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals
and Free Masons were persecuted, imprisoned and often
killed on political and behavioral (rather than racial) grounds
 Millions more, including Soviet prisoners of war and political
dissidents suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi
tyranny
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN?
 In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of handicapped
Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas.
 After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile
killing units following in the wake of the German Army began
shooting massive numbers of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) in open
fields and ravines on the outskirts of conquered cities and towns.
 Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and organized
method of killing enormous numbers of civilians -- six extermination
centers were established in occupied Poland
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AUSCHWITZ
• All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror,
genocide, and the Holocaust.
• It was established by Germans in 1940, in the suburbs of
Oswiecim, a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by
the Nazis.
• Throughout the existence of the camp, the authorities there
treated Jews with the most ruthless, and often quite refined,
cruelty
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AUSCHWITZ CON’T
• SS men regarded a Jewish life as the least valuable of all.
• To the greatest possible extent, Jews fell victim to starvation,
cold, hard labor, constant harassment and abuse, and various
kinds of cyclical extermination operations.
• Through the middle of July 1942, some of the transports arriving
in Auschwitz were sent directly to the gas chambers, while other
Jews, classified before deportation as fit for labor, were placed
in the camp.
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AUSCHWITZ CON’T
• By the second half of 1942, Jews made up a majority of
the prisoner population.
• Auschwitz was also the final destination for about
300,000 Jews from occupied Poland, 73,000 from
Slovakia, 69,000 from France, 60,000 from the
Netherlands, 55,000 from Greece, 25 from Belgium,
23,000 from Germany and Austria, 10,000 from
Yugoslavia, 7.5,000 thousand from Italy, and 690 from
Norway.
AUSCHWITZ PHOTOS
Bales of hair shaven from
women at Auschwitz, used
to make felt-yarn.
After liberation, an Allied soldier
displays a stash of gold wedding
rings taken from victims at
Buchenwald.
Nazis confiscated property of prisoners in
storerooms nicknamed “Kanada” because
the sheer amount of loot stored there was
associated with the riches of Canada
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This Nazi propaganda poster
reads, ‘Behind the enemy
powers: the Jew.
“The Eternal Jew”
Depiction of a Jew holding gold coins in one
hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a
map of the world, with the imprint of the
hammer and sickle. Posters like this promoted a
sharp rise in anti-Semitic feelings, and in some
cases violence against the Jewish community.
MARTIN NIEMOLLER
 When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
 Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
 Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
 When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
HANUKKAH DURING THE HOLOCAUST
Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a leader of the Jewish community in Britain
wrote this in his memories of the concentration camp during the
Second World War as a boy of 14: ‘It was the cold winter of 1944
and although we had nothing like calendars, my father, who was a
fellow prisoner there, took me and some of my friends to the corner
of the barrack. He announced that it was the eve of Hanukkah,
produced a curious shaped bowl, and began to light a wick
immersed in his precious, now melted margarine ration. Before he
could recite the blessing, I protested at the waste of food. He looked
at me, then at the lamp, and finally said,’ You and I have seen that it
is possible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived
almost three days without water, but you cannot live properly for
three minutes without hope.