Transcript Holocaust

Holocaust
By Timothy Hele, Alex Hayward and
Michael Every
What It Means
The word holocaust, in Greek
means complete destruction by
fire. However, it usually applies
to the period during the late 1930s
and early 1940s during which
6,000,000 of Hitler’s enemies
were brutally exterminated. They
were prominently Jews, but also
gypsies, homosexuals,
communists, journalists,
Jehovah’s witnesses, handicapped
people or anyone else who Hitler
disliked or who didn’t appease his
Aryan ideals.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
After the Great War, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of
Versailles, depriving it of land, population and resources. The
German economy crashed and its people fell into poverty and
ruin. The Government tried to make more money by printing
more banknotes but this lead to hyperinflation and hence money
became worthless.
A lady
burning
money as it
was worth
more as
fuel
because of
hyperinflation
500,000 deutschmark note
Adolf Hitler wearing Nazi uniform
Out of these ashes rose a leader
who claimed he could solve all
of Germany’s problems by
blaming the past problems on
non-Aryan people but mainly the
Jews. Germany would have to
cleanse itself from these
‘enemies’ and then it would
become the great country it once
was. In early 1933 Hitler
became the Chancellor of
Germany, answerable only to
President Hindenburg. He
started reclaiming all that
Germany had lost through the
Treaty of Versailles and won
much support.
Nazi Regime
Few dared criticise Hitler, so when President Hindenburg
died in 1934, he declared himself as absolute leader. He set
up secret police, the Gestapo, one of Hitler’s ministers,
Goebbels, used propaganda to persuade the population that
Jews were enemies of the state. Hitler gave people jobs and
Germany appeared to recover. Anti-Semitism was
ingrained into school children, producing a new generation
of Nazi supporters.
Nazi flag with
Swastika in the
centre
Kristallnacht
In 1935, new Nuremberg laws
were passed, depriving Jews of
many of their rights. On 9th
November 1938 anti-Jewish
riots were initiated over
Germany and what followed
was called ‘Night of the broken
glass’ or ‘Kristallnacht’. 20,000
Jews were taken to
concentration camps,
Synagogues were burned and
many Jews emigrated.
Jewish shop the morning after ‘Kristallnacht’
World War II
Hitler had begun extending
Germany since 1935 but in
1939 Britain and France
declared war on Germany.
Hitler’s armies swept
through the Low Countries:
Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway
and France, bringing with it
prisoners of war and plenty
of people for the newly built
concentration camps in
Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Map of the progressions of World War II
Holocaust Begins
After the war had started the
mass killings began in earnest.
Many Jews in Poland and
Russia were transported
hundreds of miles in squalid
conditions to Concentrations
camps over Europe. Jews were
now humiliated by people in
the street and forced to wear
yellow armbands. They had to
carry identity cards and were
not allowed professional jobs
or work with Aryans.
Jews wearing yellow armbands and
being tormented.
Ghettos
Jews were not only
segregated but also isolated.
They had to live in Ghettos,
in the poorest, most
dilapidated parts of cities.
Overcrowding and disease
were rife, with little
sanitation, food or education.
However, some Jews tried to
continue as normal, running
schools, printing newspapers
and holding concerts.
A Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw
Concentration & Extermination
Camps
The first Concentration camps
were in Germany, like Dachau
which I have already mentioned.
Nevertheless, when Eastern
Europe was invaded, many
camps were built there, away
from the masses and where
genocide could begin
undisturbed. On arrival,
prisoners were stripped of their
possessions, identity and clothes,
given uniforms and a number
was tattooed on their arm.
Entrance to Dachau.
Prisoners would be shot or tortured for
the slightest misdemeanour or brutally
used as animals in repugnant medical
experiments. Sometimes they were told
the only right they had was to die. In
extermination camps, those considered
unfit to work as slave labour (women,
children, sick and elderly) were gassed
with Zyklon-B, a crystalline form of
Hydrochloric acid.
Shows where the pistol
range used to be as
Dachau is now a memorial.
Barbed wire, electric fence
guarded by the gunmen in watch
tower.
The two original furnaces where bodies
were taken after being gassed.
Einsatzgruppen
In Eastern Europe, not only were there
Concentration and Extermination camps but
also a groups of Nazis who would round up all
the Jews and separate them into those who
could work and those who were to die
immediately. Those who could work were
transported in cattle trucks for days on end and
used as slave labour. Those who couldn’t work
were taken by death squads, called
‘Einsatzgruppen’ (part of the SS) into the
woods and shot. Sometimes they would line
Jews up along a riverbank and use them as
target practice.
SS promotion poster – it
says you can join at the age
of 17.
Resistance & Helpers
The Nazis final solution (the extermination of all Jews) did not always
go smoothly. In Sobibor death camp, the Jews revolted, killing guards
and freeing 600 of their own. There were uprisings in the Ghettoes,
such as Bialystock in Poland, where 40,000 Jews died but most
famously in Warsaw, April 1943, where the Jews held the Nazis back
for some weeks as the guards tried to round up all the inhabitants and
send them to the concentration camps.
Oscar Schindler’s factory today.
There were Jewish partisan fighters and many others who tried to halt
the deaths. Oskar Schindler built a factory for Jewish workers so
they wouldn’t be killed and King Christian X of Denmark did
everything he could to stop Danish Jews being executed, including
sending deputations to death camps and smuggling them into neutral
Sweden during the night. Yet, there are many unsung heroes.
Oskar Schindler (right)
A recent movie made about
Schindler’s help during the
Holocaust “Schindler’s List”
(left)
The Liberation
As the allies advanced, the
German army realised they
would be unable to complete the
Final Solution. Instead there
were death marches, marching
the few survivors from one camp
to another. Even when the Allies
liberated the camps, those who
were left were often too weak
and malnourished to pull
through, many died. The
survivors were displaced and
were frequently refused back
into their own homes.
Dachau liberation.
The Trials
In 1945, 22 Nazi leaders were put on
trial in Nuremberg for war crimes. This
was the first time someone’s guilt was
gauged on their individual responsibility,
19 were found guilty and hanged, from
evidence they had compiled themselves.
However, it didn’t stop there and those
who had fled, like Eichmann, were
eventually captured and tried for their
crimes. The Commandant of Auschwitz,
Rudolf Hess, was hanged on gallows
erected just outside the concentration
camp in which he killed over a million.
Location of concentration and
death camps all over Europe.
Lessons
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created in 1948,
entitling all human beings to minimum rights, such as freedom
from death, slavery and torture. However, Genocide didn’t stop
there. Since the Declaration of Human Rights genocide has been
committed in Cambodia and Pol Pot or Rwanda where a million
Hutus and Tutsis were murdered and Bosnia
A memorial for the holocaust.
A memorial at Auschwitz
One of many memorials at
Dachau
Spires of Harrisburg
Holocaust Memorial