Transcript concentration camps

“They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up
because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the
trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade
unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak
up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . .
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.“
Pastor Martin Niemoller
Persecution Begins
-Anti-Jewish sentiments for centuries
• Death of Jesus, having money
-Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” blamed Jews
for Germany’s problems
• Blamed Jews for losses during WWI
and Germany’s economic problems
-Nuremburg Laws – 1935
took away civil rights of Jews
Star of David
• No citizenship, property, or gov.
jobs; must wear star at all times to
identify Jewish
-Kristallnacht, 1938
• Nov. 9-10, “Night of Broken Glass”
destruction of Jewish property
• Destroyed Jewish homes, businesses,
and synagogues
As part of his purification of Germany for
the Aryan race, Hitler passed the
Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of
citizenship rights and forced them to wear
an armband with the yellow Star of David
on it at all times.
During Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” Nazi storm troopers
attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany. An
American who witnessed the violence wrote, “Jewish shop windows by the
hundreds were systematically and wantonly smashed…The main streets of
the city were a positive litter of shattered plate glass.”
Around 100 Jews were killed,
and hundred more were
injured during Kristallnacht.
Some 30,000 Jews were
arrested and hundreds of
synagogues were burned.
Afterward, the Nazis blamed
the Jews for the destruction.
Damage from Kristallnacht
Damage from Kristallnacht
Jewish Refugees
-after Hitler’s election, many Jews fled
Germany
• Nazis wanted them to leave to purify
Germany
-U.S. was one of many nations not
accepting many Jewish refugees
Albert Einstein
• Many nations would not take any more
German refugees
Jews fleeing Germany had trouble finding
nations that would accept them. France
already had 40,000 Jewish refugees and
did not want more. The British worried
about fueling anti-Semitism and refused
to admit more than 80,000. Germany’s
foreign minister observed, “We all want
to get rid of our Jews. The difficulty is
that no country wishes to receive them.”
• Einstein one of 100,000 accepted in
the U.S. because he had “exceptional
merit”
-Why did others not leave???
• Families, tradition, dignity
Final Solution
-1939
decision to rid Europe of all Jews
and other undesirables
• Political opponents (Communists and
Socialists), gypsies, Free Masons,
Jehova’s Witnesses, homosexuals,
invalids
-concentration camps set up across
Europe
• Ghettos created first, but when they
were overcrowded they began building
concentration camps
-many sent to slave labor camps
• To work for German industry or the
German war effort
-others were simply killed or
experimented upon
• Killing squads
To rid the Third Reich of all
invalids, Adolf Hitler's authorized
the Euthanasia Program, signed
in October 1939, which
destroyed all who had physical,
mental, and emotional
disabilities.
Buses used to transport patients to
euthanasia center
“Because God cannot want the sick and ailing to reproduce.”
Used as propaganda for the Euthanasia Program
Two pages of the death registry at Hadamar. These pages listed false
causes of death, but all were killed there as part of the Euthanasia
Program.
Concentration Camps
-Jews gathered from ghettos and
separated
• Those who could work were kept
alive and shipped to camps; others
were killed
-crude wooden barracks held
thousands who were fit to work
“The brute Schmidt was our guard; he beat
and kicked us if he thought we were not
working fast enough. He ordered his victims
to lie down and gave them 25 lashes with a
whip, ordering them to count out loud. If the
victim made a mistake, he was given 50
lashes…30 or 40 of us were shot every day. A
doctor usually prepared a daily list of the
weakest men. During the lunch break they
were taken to a nearby grave and shot. They
were replaced the following morning by new
arrivals from the transport of the day…It was
a miracle if anyone survived for five or six
months.”
• Barracks held up to 1,000 people
each; worked from dawn until dusk, 7
days a week, until they collapsed;
they were then killed
-hunger and disease killed thousands
Death Camps
-as war went badly for Germany, they
tried to speed Final Solution
• In 1942, the Nazis build 6 death
camps in Poland alone
-building of several death camps to
execute Jews with poison gas
• Killed as many as 12,000 Jews a day
by using Zyklon B pellets
-bodies were then buried in mass
graves or burned
• Also shot, hung, or experimented on
• Twin studies
-Auschwitz
-Belzec
-Buchenwald
-Dachau
Jews loaded onto freight trains to Chelmno extermination camp. The
Jewish people merely thought they were moving ghettos, and most of
them took their belongings with them to the concentration camps.
Some Jewish people (and others forced into concentration camps) never
made it to the camps. Mobile killing units took them to nearby fields, as
they were “waiting for the trains to arrive,” and shot them, stealing
their valuables once dead.
Main entrance to Auschwitz extermination camp
Corpses lie in one of the open rail cars on the Dachau death train.
The conditions on the trains were so harsh, and the state of those
deported so helpless, that many did not survive the journey
Suitcases that belonged to people deported to Auschwitz
Valuables confiscated from Jewish prisoners by German guards
View of the moat and barracks at Dachau. The prisoners were constantly
guarded by the watchtowers, and just on the other side of the drawbridge,
there were two crematoriums and various mass graves.
Between the barracks at Dachau
Every morning in a concentration camp started with roll call.
Thousands of prisoners would stand, sometimes for hours, while
roll was taken and punishments were dealt.
Uniformed prisoners sent to work in the concentration
camp factories. Each prisoner wore a badge to symbolize
the reason why he/she was in the camp. The SS guards
would treat them differently based on this badge.
Forced laborers build canal
The prisoners in the camps were forced to work to aid the
German war effort. These men, in Auschwitz, are making
uniforms for German soldiers.
Prisoners work in an armaments factory at Dachau
Some prisoners, when they have ceased
to be of use to the German war effort
and were healthy enough for testing,
would be used for medical testing. This
prisoner, in a compression chamber,
loses consciousness before dying during
a medical experiment stimulating high
altitudes for German pilots.
This Roma Gypsy is a victim of Nazi medical experiments, to test whether
or not seawater is potable, at Dachau.
Zyklon B pellets found after liberation of camp. One of these pellets,
placed into a gas chamber, would be enough to kill an entire room full of
people within two minutes.
Once the bodies were dead and removed from the gas
chambers, they were placed into mass graves or more simply
cremated in the concentration camps. This is the
crematorium at Majdanek extermination camp.
Survivors demonstrate how to use the crematorium in Dachau
Survivors demonstrate
how to use the
crematorium in Dachau
Survivors demonstrate how to use the crematorium in Dachau
Survivors demonstrate how to use the crematorium in Dachau
Human remains in Dachau after the camps were liberated
Dachau prisoners on a death
march
Former prisoners taken to
a hospital for medical
attention
Soviet physician examines
Auschwitz camp survivors
Warehouse of clothes that belonged to women murdered in Auschwitz
Pile of shoes from prisoners
Corpses found when U.S. troops liberated Mauthausen
American soldier tends to former
prisoner lying among corpses of
victims
Bodies piled in the crematorium mortuary in Dachau death camp
Mass grave found soon after camp liberation
Survivors
-6 million were killed in the Holocaust
-some were liberated by Allied
armies
• Led away from camps on Death
Marches to try and hide evidence
• Camps liberated by Soviets first in
late 1944, then by all Allies in 1945
Never shall I forget that night, the first
night in the camp, which has turned my
life into one long night…Never shall I
forget the little faces of the children,
whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths
of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never
shall I forget those flames which
consumed my faith forever. Never shall I
forget that nocturnal silence which
deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire
to live. Never shall I forget those
moments which murdered my God and my
soul and turned my dreams to dust.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night
-others were helped to hide or
escape from capture
-Elie Wiesel
“Night”
-Oscar Schindler