Transcript Bell Ringer 2/3/14 Define “genocide”. What racial or

Bell Ringer
Define “genocide”. What
racial or ethnic or cultural
groups are you aware in
the past or present against
which genocide has been
committed?
The Holocaust
→Chapter 14
Section 4
Genocide
Deliberate
murder of an
entire people
Objectives
●Explain how the persecution
of Jews and other minorities
increased in Germany under
the Nazis in the 1930s.
●Describe how the Nazis
carried out their plans for
genocide.
Holocaust
Nazi Germany’s
systematic murder
of European Jews.
Anti-Semitism
Hostility toward
Jews
concentration camp
Places where prisoners
of war and political
prisoners are confined,
usually under harsh
conditions.
Kristallnicht
“Night of the Broken Glass”;
Night of 11/9 and 11/10 1938
where Nazi thugs in Germany
and Austria looted and destroyed
Jewish stores, houses and
synagogues. Mass arrests of
Jews followed.
Wannsee Conference
January 1942 – government
officials met to announce a plan
for “the final solution to the
Jewish question”; Called for
establishing concentration camps
in rural areas of Germany and
elsewhere.
death camps
Existed for the
sole purpose of
mass murder
War Refugee Board
(WRB); Created in
January 1944 by FDR
to try to help people
threatened with
murder by the Nazis.
Main Idea
During World War II,
the Nazis carried out a
brutal plan that
resulted in the deaths
of 6 million Jews and
millions of other
victims.
Adolf Hitler came to
power in 1933.
He implemented the Nazi
philosophy from his book
Mein Kampf.
The Start of Persecution
▪ Theories were used to justify the
persecution of Semitic peoples
(Arabs, Ethiopians, Middle
Eastern, North Africans and
Jews.
▪ By the 1880s, anti-Semitism had
come to mean hostility toward
Jews.
▪ When the Nazi party
took control of Germany’s
government in 1933, antiSemitism became the
official policy of the
nation.
The Nazis Take Action
German citizens were encouraged
to stop going to Jewish
businesses.
▪ 1935 – Nuremberg Laws passed
taking away German citizenship
of Jews and forbidding non-Jews
to marry Jews.
▪
▪ 1937 and 1938 – Nazis tried
to “Aryanize” Jewish businesses
→Jewish doctors banned
from treating non-Jews
→Jews were required to
register property
→All Germans had to carry
ID cards
Jews cards were marked with a
red letter “J” and all Jews were
given new middle names to
make it easier for police to
identify Jews
▪ SA organized to silence any
opposition
▪ SA organized to silence any
opposition
▪ SS formed by Hitler as an elite
guard/private army of the
Nazi party
▪ Secret State Police (Gestapo)
was formed to identify and
pursue lawbreakers
▪ Nazis began using
concentration camps for
people they considered
“undesirable” (homeless,
homosexuals, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, people with mental
or physical disabilities and
Gypsies)
Concentration Camps
Kristallnicht
Refugees Seek An Escape
▪ 130,000 Jews fled Germany
between 1933 and 1937
▪ Immigration to many countries,
including the U.S. was difficult
From Murder to Genocide
▪ The Einsatzgruppen - special forces
of mobile killing units sent to Poland
in 1939.
▪ Mass murders by firing squad
▪ Eliminated members of Poland’s
upper class, intellectuals, priests and
influential Jews
▪ By 1941, they carried out
Hitler’s orders to
eliminate Communist
leaders and Jews during
the invasion of the Soviet
Union
▪ Wannsee Conference - held in
January 1942 by government officials
outside of Berlin, Germany
▪ Announced Nazi plan called the
“final solution to the Jewish
question.”
▪ Plans called for establishing special
concentration camps in rural areas
of Germany and elsewhere
▪ In these camps,
genocide, or the deliberate
destruction of Europe’s
Jewish population, was to
be carried out.
▪The Death Camps
▪By 1941, Nazis were experimenting
on Jews and Soviet prisoners
▪Nazis concluded that poison gas
(Zyklon B) was the most efficient
way of killing people
▪Gas chambers were disguised as
showers
▪2,300 Jews killed on first day of
operation (W. Poland; Dec. 1941)
▪ Six death camps were built in Poland
▪ Existed solely for mass murder
▪Jews were crammed onto trains and taken
to the camps
▪ Most did not know where they were
going when boarding trains
▪ Prisoners were inspected upon arrival
▪ Elderly, most women with children and
those appearing weak were taken to the
gas chambers immediately.
▪ Bodies were burned in huge ovens
▪ Men and women had their heads
shaved and a registration number
tattooed on their arms
▪ Crowded barracks with no
bathrooms, heat or beds
▪ Disease spread fast and killed many
▪ 43,000 prisoners died at
Germany’s ▪ Buchenwald labor
camp between 1937 and 1945
▪ 1.5 Million people died at
Poland’s Auschwitz death camp
▪ about 90% at Auschwitz were
Jewish
▪ Fighting Back
▪ Some Jews, inside and outside the
camps, resisted the Nazis
▪ April 1943 - Warsaw Ghetto revolted
against deportation to the death camp
Treblinka
▪ Some were able to escape
▪ The few who escaped were able to
spread word of the conditions in the
camps
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
▪ Rescue and Liberation
▪ Not until January 1944 did U.S. take action
regarding these events
▪ Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board
(WRB) to try to help people threatened by the
Nazis
▪ About 200,000 lives were saved
▪ Allies advanced in late 1944 and Nazis
abandoned concentration camps outside German
and moved them to German soil
▪ May 1945 - Germany collapsed and American
soldiers entered camps
“The odor was so bad I backed up, but I looked
at a bottom bunk and there I saw one man. He
was too weak to get up; he could barely turn
his head...He looked like a skeleton; and his
eyes were deep set. He didn’t utter a sound;
he just looked at me with those eyes, and they
still haunt me today.”
Leon Bass, American Soldier
upon entering the barracks at Buchenwald
A larger rescue was carried out by a single individual than
that of the WRB. Oskar Schindler was a Nazi industrialist
who purposely employed some 1,300 Jews in his
factories in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Their jobs saved
them from being shipped to the gas chambers.
▪ November 1945 - Allies placed 24
Nazis on trial for crimes against
humanity
▪ Nuremberg Trials - 12 received
death sentences
▪ Set a precedent that individuals
could not claim “following orders” as
a defense for war crimes