Transcript Holocaust Research Terms You Should Know!

Holocaust Research Terms
You Should Know!
1. Background Information
Eugenics
• Eugenics is a pseudoscience that deals
with the improvement of hereditary
qualities of a race (selective breeding
for certain characteristics.)
• Eugenics was originated by Sir Francis
Galton (British).
• The Nazis totally believed that the
Germans were of the Aryan race and
that this race was superior to all others.
• Jews could never be Germans because
they could never be Aryans.
The Perfect Aryan!
Nazi depiction of a typical
Jewish man
• The Nazis saw Jews as a race and not
a religion. Therefore, if Jews married
Germans they would corrupt the Aryan
blood line.
• The Nazis produced a chart which showed that
the European racial type is aesthetically
superior to the Aborigine, Negro, and Oriental
races.
• Nazi chart showing racial aesthetics
Aryans
Aborigines
Negroes
Orientals
• In 1933 the Nazis came up with a formula to
define a “non-Aryan” as any person that had
one Jewish parent or grandparent. This was
later redefined in November 1935 under the
Reich* Citizenship Law.
* The Third Reich refers to the advent of the
third 1000 year period in Germany and the
world's history, during which the Nazis
believed their Nordic, Atlantean Master Race
would rule the world.
The Reich Citizenship Law
1. This law stated that no Jew could be a
citizen of the Reich.
2. No Jew could vote.
3. Jews could not hold public office.
4. Jewish civil servants were required to retire.
5. A person was fully Jewish if he or she had
at least three Jewish grandparents.
6. If a person had two Jewish grandparents
but did not practice the Jewish religion or
have a Jewish spouse, then that person
was designated as a “part Jew” or
crossbreed (Mischlinge).
7. If a person had only one Jewish
grandparent and did practice the Jewish
religion he/she was a Mischlinge of the
second degree.
• These Nazi racial laws established race as
the fundamental legal principle in German
life. They were used to identify who the
targets for persecution and death would be.
• Aryan veterinarians even refused to treat the
pets of their Jewish owners. Germans
avoided all contacts with Jews as this could
be construed as traitorous association with
the enemies of Aryan blood.
The
Nazis
• (National Socialist Party) was a German
Fascist movement that placed nation or
race above the individual and that stood
for a centralized autocratic government
headed by a dictator, Adolf Hitler.
The Jews have endured
centuries of persecution and
prejudice.
• However, worldwide hatred of Jews between
WWI and WWII grew because of two factors:
– 1. Zionism - the conviction that Jews should have
their own country;
– 2. The publication of an anti-Semitic book entitled
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that “revealed”
a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The
book was a hoax, but people like Henry Ford
believed it, and it enabled Hitler’s Nazi party to
gain popularity.
• The Nazi party began as the German
Worker’s Party in 1919 and envisioned a
German state ruled by the middle class and
purged of Jews and foreigners.
• Hitler became the 55th member of the party.
• In March 1920 they changed their name to
the National Socialist German Workers’ Party,
or Nazi for short.
• Hitler’s speeches drew thousands and could
last two hours. By 1921 he had total control
of the Nazi Party.
• From its beginning, the Nazi Party adopted
the slogan, “The Jews are our misfortune,”
and from its beginning, preached hatred of
the Jewish people.
• In 1923 the Nazis had 55,000 members and
tried to overthrow the German government
but failed. As a result, they were banned from
German politics and their membership
dropped to 27,000.
• The Great Depression of 1929 was a worldwide depression. Over three million Germans
were without jobs. By 1933 over six million
were jobless in Germany, and the Nazi
membership increased to over 200,000
members.
• In the 1930 elections in Germany the Nazis
got 6.4 million votes and won 107 seats in the
Reichstag (their congress). They were the
second most popular political party in
Germany.
• Because the Germans feared the
Communists in Russia, and the Nazis were
anti-Communist, their membership grew to
1.4 million members by 1932.
• In 1932 Hitler became a German citizen so
that he could run for President of Germany.
• In 1932 Hitler ran against Paul von
Hindenberg, the incumbent president, with a
campaign slogan of “freedom and bread.”
Hindenburg won the election by more than 7
million votes.
• The Nazis were a vocal, strong political party,
and Hindenberg knew that he had to appease
them if he wanted to prevent a civil war, and
to be a successful President. That’s when he
made the biggest mistake in history: he
appointed Hitler as the Chancellor of
Germany on January 30, 1933.
• The Chancellor is like the vice-president in the
USA.
• One hundred days after Hitler became Chancellor,
more than 20,000 books written by Jewish
authors were burned in the Opera House Square
in Berlin.
1. Ironically, a hundred years earlier, Heinrich
Heine, a German poet and a Jew had
written, “Where books are burned, in the end
people will be burned.” His words were
prophetic.
• Within six months after Hitler had been
appointed Chancellor, democracy was dead
in Germany, civil rights were gone, and the
Nazi Party was the only official political party
permitted to exist in Germany.
• By the end of 1933, fifty concentration camps
were opened in Germany, and every Nazi
political opponent was sent to a camp. The
Nazi reign of terror had begun.
Mein Kampf
• In 1923 the Nazi Party tried to take over
the German government in an event
known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
• November 8, 1923, the Nazis held a
rally in a beer hall in Munich and
proclaimed that a national revolution
had begun.
• The following day they held a
demonstration in the center of Munich
that turned into a riot. In a shoot-out
with the Munich police, sixteen Nazis
and four policemen were killed.
• Hitler and the Nazis ran for their lives
but were captured and put on trial for
treason.
• At his trial for treason Hitler argued that
the real criminals were the government
officials who signed the Treaty of
Versailles ending WWI. The judges
agreed with him and were sympathetic
toward Hitler. This also brought Hitler
into the national spotlight.
• Hitler was sentenced to five years in
prison. However, he only served nine
months confined to an apartment within
a prison complex, with his room-mate,
Rudolf Hess.
• While confined, Hitler dictated a book to
Hess, which became his political
manifesto. Mein Kampf means “My
Struggle.”
• The book became one of the most
influential of 20th Century and made
Hitler a wealthy man. By 1945 it had
sold ten million copies and was required
reading for every Nazi.
• The book deals with Hitler’s six povertystricken years, from 1907-1913 when he
lived in Vienna, Austria. In Vienna he
learned about social Darwinism, antisocialism, and anti-Semitism.
The Treaty of Versailles
• This was the peace treaty which officially
ended World War I.
• Germany was forced to accept full
responsibility for causing the war and make
reparations to certain countries.
• Germany was forced to give up some of its
territory to a number of surrounding countries,
such as France, Denmark, and Poland.
Europe before World War I
Europe after WW I.
• Germany was stripped of all its
overseas and African colonies.
• Restrictions were put on the size of the
German military of 100,000 soldiers and
no tanks.
• Germany agreed to respect the
independence of Austria.
• The Allies held Germany solely
responsible for all “loss and damage”
suffered by them during the war and
provided the basis for reparations. The
amount was officially put at 269 billion
gold marks, a sum that many
economists deemed to be excessive
and would require Germany to pay
through 1987. It was lowered to 132
billion marks, which was still an
unrealistic amount of money.
• The amount of money that Germany
was forced to pay for war damages put
her into an economic depression and
ruined the German economy.
The Episode of the St. Louis
• In May 1939, hundreds of Jewish immigrants
secured visas to migrate to Cuba (937
people).
• Although all of the passengers had the proper
documents, when they arrived in Cuba the
Cuban President wouldn’t admit them until
they paid a large amount of money.
• Only a few refugees could pay the price to
disembark in Cuba.
• The ship left Cuba and sailed along the coast
of Florida, hoping that the United States
would agree to accept the refugees. The U
.S. Coast guard sailed alongside the ship to
make sure no one jumped off.
• After sailing along the eastern coast of the US
for three weeks, the St. Louis set sail for
Europe.
• When the St. Louis returned to Europe,
287 travelers were admitted to Great
Britain. The rest of the passengers
disembarked in France, Belgium, and
the Netherlands, which came under
Nazi rule. Except for the immigrants
that went to Cuba and Great Britain, all
were murdered by the Nazis.
• Why is the incident of the St. Louis
important?
• It shows that the strict immigration
policy enforced by the U.S.A. would not
bend because of the environment
created by the Great Depression.
End of Part I Notes!
The St. Louis docked in Havana Harbor, Cuba
2. Holocaust Terms and
Events
Kristalnacht
“The Night of Broken Glass”
• In 1938 many Polish Jews living in
Germany were rounded up and sent to
a concentration camp, including the
family of Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year
old Polish Jew living in Paris.
• Grynszpan went to the German
Embassy in Paris and shot a German
diplomat.
• In retaliation for this Jewish murder of a
German diplomat, Nazi Propaganda
Minister, Joseph Goebbels gave the
signal for a nationwide pogrom* against
the Jews.
*Pogrom
• Pogroms originated in Russia. They
were government sanctioned riots and
vandalism against Jews and Jewishowned property.
• On November 9 and 10, 1938, violence
raged throughout Germany against
Jews. Synagogues were set on fire,
Jewish businesses were vandalized,
many Jews were killed, and thousands
were rounded up and sent to
concentration camps.
• Shattered glass littered the streets and
created the name “Kristalnacht” or
“Night of Broken Glass” to memorialize
the event.
• This event marks the beginning of the
Holocaust.
• The Jews were forced to pay the Nazis
for the damages done to their own
property for Kristalnacht!
• Three days after Kristalnacht the Nazis
enacted policies that segregated Jews from
going to theatres, parks, schools, plus
prohibited them from owning and operating
businesses. Jewish businesses were taken
over by the Nazis.
Selection
• Selection means being chosen to continue
living because you are still physically fit for
slave labor.
• Selections occurred immediately upon arrival
at a camp.
• Those who were too old or too young, or that
appeared to be ill were immediately killed.
• Selections were held on a frequent
basis within camps to weed out those
prisoners that were becoming weak or
ill.
The Final Solution
• This was the Nazi code word for their
plan to annihilate every Jew living in
Europe.
• The Nazis had several other plans to
get the Jews out of Germany before
arriving at the Final Solution to the
Jewish Question:
• 1. Their first idea was to deport every
Jew to another country. The incident of
the St. Louis shows that this wasn’t a
viable option since no country wanted a
flood of refugees.
2. After the Nazis conquered France, they
wanted to use the French island of
Madagascar as a Jewish slave colony.
This was a good idea until Germany
invaded Poland.
• Poland had the largest Jewish population in
all of Europe. Now there would be too many
Jews to send to Madagascar.
• After the September 1939 German invasion
of Poland, the Nazis developed a
comprehensive plan to annihilate the Jews by
this process. On January 20, 1942, fifteen
high ranking Nazi and German government
leaders met near a lake in Berlin known as
Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich called the
meeting where the “final solution to the
Jewish question” was hatched. Not one
person at the meeting objected to killing
every Jew in Europe, thus giving government
sanction to genocide.
1. Round up all of the Jews and
segregate them into ghettos so they
would have a large number of them
centralized in one location.
2. Create the Einsatzguppen (mobile
killing units) to massacre whole Jewish
communities.
3. Create death camps where large
numbers of people could be killed
efficiently and cost-effectively, and
their bodies could be disposed of
without attracting public attention.
4. Trains would be used to transport
victims to the camps
The Einsatzgruppen
• Mobile killing squads made up of
special duty units, composed primarily
of SS and police personnel, assigned to
kill Jews and other undesirables in
Poland and the Soviet Union.
• The Nazis’ first attempt at mass
executions operated under the
command of Heinrich Heydrich.
• They followed the German army into
Poland and rounded up “undesirables”
in every village, transported the victims
to a wooded area, stripped them of their
clothing, told them to lie down in a ditch,
and shot them.
• The Einsatzgruppen killed more than a million
Jews and tens of thousands of Soviet and
Polish political and religious officials, as well
as gypsies.
• They shot men, women, and children without
regard for age or gender.
• One of the worst massacres occurred near
the Ukranian city of Kiev where 34,000
people were machine-gunned to death in a
two day orgy of executions.
•
This first method of mass execution
encountered some problems for the Nazis:
1. The killers needed to look at their victims,
and as hardened and brain-washed as
they were, they turned to alcohol to help them
accomplish their work and also to forget what
they did. Many developed psychological
problems.
2. Gun fire attracted attention and they wanted to
keep their mass executions a secret, not only
from their own citizens, but from the world.
3. The Nazis needed to find a more
economical and efficient way to kill
a larger number of people, quickly
and more cheaply.
a. They experimented with many
methods including blowing
people up, but their remains
flew up into trees, etc. and were
difficult to hide.
• The Nazi idea to use gas as a means
for mass murder came from their
experiments with using gas to kill
victims in the T-4 Program.
The T-4 Program
• In the fall of 1939 the German government
established the Euthanasie Programme
under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr.
Karl Brandt.
• The headquarters for this program were at
Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin and the code
name for this program was derived from its
address: T-4 Program.
• The word “euthanasia” means “mercy killing”
and is synonymous with physician-assisted
suicide. The Nazis corrupted this word.
• The Nazi regime’s goal was to remove those
people unfit to live and produce offspring from
their population.
• The first phase of this program came under
the Nuremberg Laws and required the
sterilization of anyone deemed “unfit.”
• Those “unfit” included Jews, gypsies, and any
person with a physical or mental defect. This
included all handicapped people or those with
incurable diseases or mental conditions in
Germany. These victims were referred to as
“life unworthy of life.”
• The very first victims were newborn babies
that presented defects at birth. They were
killed at birth in a discreet manner without
their mothers knowing it .
• Euthanasia progressed to handicapped
hospitalized patients that were killed by
doctors with lethal injections of drugs. Their
death certificates would state that they died of
complications of pneumonia, etc.
• Before long gas chambers were constructed
inside hospitals and handicapped patients
were placed inside of them in groups and
killed with carbon monoxide gas.
• Next, the Nazis constructed special
gassing facilities that were built to look
like medical institutions on the outside,
but were killing centers for the
handicapped.
Bernberg Euthanasia Facility
• Between December 1939 and August
1941, about 50,000 Germans were
secretly killed by the Euthanasia
Program.
• Under the T-4 Program it is estimated
that as many as 400,000 may have
been killed. The Nazis destroyed the
records so that an accurate accounting
can’t be made.
• It is important to note that when people began
to suspect that their loved ones were being
killed by medical facilities and physicians,
they were outraged. The Christian church
leaders spoke out against it and wrote to Nazi
officials. Hitler capitulated to public pressure
and the program was stopped for a year
before secretly starting up again.
A. This is important because it shows that
the Nazis responded to public pressure.
• At the end of World War II when
American troops went into German
hospitals, they found that doctors were
still gassing civilians in euthanasia
centers. Both doctors and nurses that
were found to have participated in this
program were put on trial in 1965.
None were punished, and many saw
nothing wrong with what they were
doing.
The Gestapo
• Created by Hermann Goring on April 26,
1933.
• Transferred to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934.
• Himmler answered only to Hitler and through
the SS was free to define “legality” and was
unhindered by moral constraints.
• When Himmler became the head of all of the
German police in 1936, the Gestapo was led
by Reinhard Heydrich.
• The Gestapo became a tool of terror, often
placing people in “protective custody” before
sending them to concentration camps.
• Orchestrated pogroms against Jews including
what came to be known as Kristallnacht.
• Some of the SS were part of the
Einsatzgruppen.
–
–
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»
Most of the SS were professional men
which included lawyers, physicians,
and even clergymen. They were people
that had “a heightened sense of duty.”
Pogroms
• Government sanctioned riots against a group
of people because of religious, racial, or
ethnic prejudice.
• Began in Russia in the late 1800’s under the
Czar as a way to drive Jews out of Russia
• Adopted by the Nazis as a way to terrorize
Jewish communities and kill Jewish citizens.
Ghettos
• Segregated, walled-in areas of cities where Jews
were forced to relocate before they were transported
to concentration or death camps.
• Jews were made to wear some kind of outward
identification sign, such as a yellow star or an
armband with a Star of David.
• The first ghetto was created by the
Nazis on October 8, 1939, in the Lodz
district of Poland. Other large ghettos
in Poland were Lublin, Warsaw, and
Krakow. Ghettos were formed in many
Eastern European cities.
• Warsaw had the largest Jewish
population in Europe with Jews
comprising 30% of the city’s population.
• About 400,000 Jews were forced to move into
the Warsaw ghetto. German authorities
forced ghetto residents to live in an area of
1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2
persons per room.
• Besides being over-crowded, the residents
had restricted food rations thus producing
hunger and then starvation. Squalid living
conditions created an environment for
diseases to breed which brought about
immense suffering and death.
•
During 1942 and 1943 the Nazis “liquidated”
the ghettos by deporting the inhabitants to
death camps, or by murdering them in the
ghettos.
•
In the summer of 1942 the Nazis removed
300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to
the Treblinka death camp. About 60,000
people remained in the ghetto.
1. Of those remaining in the ghetto, 750 young
men and women decided to fight to the death
rather than be sent like sheep to the slaughter
house .
2. They were able to obtain some
guns and ammunition and train
themselves to fight.
3. With their limited resources, these
brave young people were able to
defend themselves against the
Nazis from April 19 - May 16,
1943. Finally, the Germans began
burning the ghetto, building by
building until they either killed or burned
to death everyone.
• The End of Part II Notes