Transcript The National Socialist Party (Nazi) took power in Germany

Destruction and Silence:
A Short Study of the
Holocaust
Created by:
Cory Brant Warnick
Patrick Henry High School
Ashland, VA
22 May 2003
When the violently anti-Semitic National Socialist German Workers
Party (Nazi) took power in 1933, it did not initially intend to
exterminate the Jews of Europe. Its members did, however, wish to
separate Germans from Jews and others, believing that the German
race was in danger of being destroyed by “biologically inferior” peoples.
On the Nazis’ categorized list of inferior
or politically dangerous peoples:
• Jews
• Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Gypsies (Roma)
• Homosexuals
• Communists and Socialists
• Poles and other ethnic groups
• Mentally and physically disabled
people
Some people were forced to wear
patches of various shapes identifying
them according to race, religion, or
politics.
Political Prisoner
Jew
Jehovah’s Witness
The horizontal categories list
markings for the following types of
prisoners: political, professional
criminal, emigrant, Jehovah's
Witnesses, homosexual, Germans shy
of work, and other nationalities shy
of work. The vertical categories begin
with the basic colors, and then show
those for repeat offenders, prisoners
in punishment kommandos, Jews,
Jews who have violated racial laws
by having sexual relations with
Aryans, and Aryans who violated
racial laws by having sexual
relations with Jews.
The remaining symbols give examples
of marking patterns. (Caption
courtesy of the USHMM website.)
Gypsies at Bergen-Belsen
Hadamar Institute: Discreet location
of euthanasia executions 1940-1945.
Then, during the mid-1930s the Nazi regime began to arrest some of the
targeted people, especially communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
send them to concentration camps. Some were executed at the camps
immediately, but the majority did forced labor. Disabled people and the
insane were quietly executed through the Nazi “euthanasia” program.
Center and bottom
left: Non-Jewish
German residents
watch as synagogues
burn. They do not
try to put out the
flames.
Bottom right:
Broken stained
glass in a
synagogue after
Kristallnacht.
In November of 1938, a Jewish
nationalist assassinated a Nazi
official in Paris. In retaliation,
the Nazi Party instigated
Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken
Glass”), a night in which rioters
burned or vandalized thousands
of Jewish synagogues, temples,
businesses, and homes, and
killed about 91 Jews.
By 1939, thousands of Jews and others
were being sent to ghettos or
concentration camps, or were being
deported. Life in the ghettos and
concentration camps was harsh and
crowded, and the people suffered from
hunger, disease, and violence.
Above: Arrival at the Kovno ghetto
(Lithuania). Top right: Life in the
Kovno ghetto. Bottom right: A
deportation action at Kovno.
Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.
Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.
Meanwhile, Jews
found behind the lines
during the German
invasion of Eastern
European countries
(1939-1942) and the
USSR were executed
wholesale by the
Einsatzgruppen
(mobile death squads).
German soldiers of
the Waffen-SS and
the Reich Labor
Service look on as a
member of an
Einsatzgruppe
prepares to shoot a
Ukrainian Jew
kneeling on the edge
of a mass grave
filled with corpses.
(Caption courtesy of
USHMM website.)
Women and children were not excluded from the killing actions.
Top left: Jewish children are led to their
execution on a beach in Liepaja, Latvia.
Top right: Jewish women await
execution by firing squad on the lip of a
mass grave at Liepaja. Bottom left:
Mania Halef, 5 years old, one of over
30,000 people killed in the 1939 mass
execution at Babi Yar, near Kiev,
Ukraine. Bottom right: Anna Glinberg,
3 years old, executed at Babi Yar.
The Führer, Adolf
Hitler, leader of the
Third Reich and the
National Socialists
(Nazis), formulated
the idea to eliminate
Jews from Europe.
Between July 1941
and January 1942,
Nazi leaders Adolf
Hitler, Heinrich
Himmler, Hermann
Goering, Reinhard
Heydrich, and
Adolf Eichmann
decided to
implement a plan
called the Final
Solution, which was
intended to solve
the problem of
having millions of
Jews within new
Nazi-held
territories. Their
solution was to kill
all European Jews.
Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler,
head of the SS, was
responsible for
running the
concentration
camps and killing
centers.
SS-Brigadeführer Reinhard Heydrich
oversaw Einsatzgruppen activities and
the carrying out of Reich anti-Jewish
policy.
Other organizers of the
Final Solution
Generalfeldmarschall Hermann
Goering, commander of the
Luftwaffe and original successor
to Hitler, organized the Gestapo
and the first concentration camps.
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann,
organized the deportation of over 3 million
Jews to the concentration and death camps.
Belzec
Chelmno
Sobibor
By 1942, hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to
the six killing centers at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor,
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Majdanek (in
1943). Between 1942 and 1945, millions sent there
were killed by bullets, gas vans, or gas chambers.
Treblinka
Majdanek
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.
Chelmno and Sobibor
Sign for the train station at Sobibor.
A group of Jewish men at the
Chelmno death camp await
execution in a gas van.
Majdanek
A mound of victims' shoes found in
Majdanek after the liberation.
Prisoners doing forced
labor at Majdanek.
Treblinka
Jews captured by the SS during the
suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising march past the St. Zofia
hospital, through the intersection of
Nowolipie and Zelasna Streets, towards
the Umschlagplatz for deportation to
Treblinka. (Caption courtesy of the
USHMM website.)
Belzec
Close-up of a Gypsy couple sitting in an open
area in the Belzec concentration camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
View of the entrance to the main camp
of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). The words,
“ARBEIT MACHT FREI” over the gate
translate to,“Work will set you free.”
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Corpses of Auschwitz
prisoners in block 11 of the
main camp (Auschwitz I),
as discovered by Soviet
war crimes investigators.
(Caption courtesy of the
USHMM website.)
By 1942, the camps disposed of most of the bodies
daily by cremation in ovens or large pits.
Two crematory ovens at Dachau
Despite the victims hopeless situation, there was resistance
against the Nazis. In 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto
(Poland) rose up against the SS soldiers who had been sent
to gather them for deportation to concentration camps.
Three members of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw (Left to right):
Benjamin Miedzyrzecki, Feigele Peltel, and Tuwia Borzykowski. These
people risked their lives to feed or to arm Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Led by Mordechai Anielewicz, the resistance in Warsaw continued for 20
days, until Anielewicz was killed. It took 1,200 SS soldiers to suppress the
uprising, and 56,000 Jews were captured or killed. They were sent to
Treblinka and other camps where most of them were executed.
A Jewish
fighter from
the Warsaw
resistance
emerges from
his hiding
place.
Bottom left: Captured survivors of the
Warsaw uprising are forced to march to the
gathering point for deportation to Treblinka.
Bottom right: A group of future Jewish
fighters. Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of
the Warsaw Uprising can be seen standing
on the right in the photo. Top right: A
captured Jewish resistance fighter is
searched by an SS soldier.
Many uprisings occurred at
camps such as Sobibor and
at ghettos other than
Warsaw, but all were
brutally suppressed, and the
Jewish fighters were almost
always executed wholesale
once captured. Some Jews
escaped to fight in partisan
resistance units in the forests
of Eastern Europe, where
they fought a bitter, take-noprisoners type of war against
SS and Wehrmacht troops.
Though noble, resistance
among the camps and
ghettos was not common and
did not change the fate of the
prisoners in the
extermination camps.
Group portrait of members of the
Kalinin Jewish partisan unit (Bielski
group) on guard duty at an airstrip in
the Naliboki Forest. (Caption courtesy
of USHMM)
The killing in the camps and ghettos continued until 1945, when
American, Canadian, British, and Soviet troops began discovering
and liberating the former ghettos, camps, and killing centers.
American soldiers enter Buchenwald concentration camp (Germany).
The condition of the starved and murdered prisoners they
found was so horrific that many battle-hardened veterans
were overwhelmed. Some troops vomited, and some wept.
A corpse at Dachau (Germany)
Survivors at Ebensee (Austria)
None of the troops were left unaffected by what they saw.
American
soldiers shoot
captured SS
camp guards
along a wall at
Dachau, April
1945.
American units executed many captured SS camp guards on the spot. Local
citizens were forced to view the dead or to exhume and rebury them, while
surviving camp prisoners were given food and medical attention.
American troops force German civilians near Buchenwald
to view stacks of camp victims’ bodies, May 1945.
U.S. soldiers
force Hitler Youth
members to view
bodies of Dachau
victims in
boxcars, April
1945
The Allies arrested thousands of former Nazi leaders and soldiers, and
put hundreds on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plascow work camp.
Sadistic and brutal, he personally killed scores of prisoners.
The Polish government tried and executed him in 1946.
The most famous of the war crimes trials was the one held in Nuremberg,
Germany from 1945 to 1947, where several top Nazi leaders were sentenced to
life in prison or to death. The world finally saw the horrors that the Nazis had
carried out against Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, communists,
socialists, mentally and physically disabled people, and Gypsies.
Nuremberg Tribunal,
1945. The former
Nazis on trial are on
the far left, where
they are guarded by
Allied soldiers in
white helmets.
With the death toll at nearly 6.5 million, the
Holocaust became the world’s largest and
most devastating example of genocide.
Survivors and historians wish to remember
and to understand the Holocaust in hopes
that nothing like it will ever happen again.
The initial inspiration for this presentation is the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum Website. Its collection of photographs and
electronically duplicated documents is extensive and superior. The
creator of this presentation made liberal use of the USHMM photographic
archive with permissions. Any use of documents not owned by the
USHMM or in the public domain is unintentional. A special thanks to Ms.
Frances Joyner for looking over this presentation and giving editing
advice. Also, a thanks must go to Professor Joseph Bendersky of Virginia
Commonwealth University, whose courses in German history and whose
knowledge of the Holocaust also inspired me to create this presentation.
Finally, assistance given by Leslie Swift of the USHMM is greatly
appreciated. However, any errors in this presentation are, of course, the
sole responsibility of the creator of the presentation.
Cory Brant Warnick
Patrick Henry High School
Ashland, VA
22 May 2003