Transcript Document 525926

The Holocaust was the systematic,
bureaucratic, state-sponsored
persecution and murder of
approximately six million Jews by the
Nazi regime and its collaborators.
"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin
meaning "sacrifice by fire."
- In the early years of the third Reich Hitler
promised to "free" Germany from Jews.
- But their was no clear-cut policy for getting
rid of the German Jewish population.
Before the War (1933-1938)
Steps taken by Nazis to free Germany
1. stripping Jews of their German citizenship
2. using harsh discrimination laws to pressure
them to leave the country
3. finally expelling them from Germany
Jews in Pre-WWII Germany
- only made up 1 percent of the German population
- 66 million Germans and only 525,000 Jews
1933 - Boycott of Jewish Businesses
1935 - Nuremberg Laws
1935-1938 - Pressure forces Jews from
Germany
Three Jewish businessmen are forced to march
down a crowded Leipzig street while carrying
signs reading: "Don't buy from Jews; Shop in
German businesses!" Leipzig, Germany
Sign on truck carrying Storm Troopers urges
"Germans! Defend yourselves. Don't buy from
Jews." Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933.
Legal Definition of Jew
- any child born to a Jewish parent after 1935
- a person with three Jewish grandparents
- a person married to a Jew and who had two
Jewish grandparents
Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935
• Deprived German Jews of their rights of citizenship,
giving them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich.
– The laws also made it forbidden for Jews to marry or have sexual
relations with Aryans.
• The Nuremberg Laws had the unexpected result of
causing confusion and heated debate over who was a
"full Jew."
– The Nazis settled on defining a "full Jew" as a person with three
Jewish grandparents. Those with less were designated as
Mischlinge.
– After the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, a dozen supplemental Nazi
decrees were issued that eventually outlawed the Jews
completely, depriving them of their rights as human beings.
The white figures
represent
Aryans; the black
figures represent
Jews; and the
shaded figures
represent
Mischlinge.
Economic Segregation
German takeover of Jewish property
1938 - Nazi law required Jews to register all
their belongings (eventually taken by
Nazis)
Oct. 1938 - Jews were stripped of their
businesses, lost their livelihood.
Social Segregation
- Jews became public outcasts
- banned from all place of entertainment
- beaches, theaters, park, public restrooms
- Jews were forced to wear a yellow star
(easy to identify)
Nazis invade Poland and begin
WWII
- Poland had the largest Jewish population in
Europe
- 3.3 million Jews
2nd Solution
Sept. 1939 - June 22, 1941
Hitler ordered all Jews to be
moved to Poland and held in
Ghettos.
Ghetto - separate section of a city where
members of a minority group forced
to live.
Cattle Trains were used to transport Jews
from all over Europe to Poland.
Cattle Cars
- Jews were packed so
tight, they had no
room to sit or breath
- unheated, windowless
train cars
- the only bathroom
was a bucket or
barrel
- many died before
even arriving at the
Ghettos
The Nazi Ghettos
- isolated Jewish communities
- located in cities of Eastern Europe
- a section of the city would be sealed off, no
one could enter or leave
- The largest Ghetto was Warsaw, Poland
- 650,000 Jews living on a 1-mile stretch of
land
Reasons Nazis set up Ghettos
1. To concentrate Jews in small areas
2. Stations for forced labor and eventually
for death camps
Forced Slave Labor
- Nazi decree in 1939
- All Jewish Men and Women between 14-65 years
of age were to become slave laborers for the Third
Reich
- Jews worked in German industries
(12 hr days)
The Final Solution
(1941-1945)
- no European Jew was to
remain alive
- genocide (elimination of an
entire race of people)
Evolution of Methods used to
eliminate the Jews
1. Firing squads
- Jews were gathered together and shot
- On Sept. 29/30, 1941 over 34,000
Jews were gunned down in a 36 hour
period.
The ‘Final Solution’
• In January 1942, Himmler
decided to change tactics once
again and called a special
conference at Wannsee.
• At this conference it was
decided that the existing
methods were too inefficient
and that a new ‘Final
Solution’ was necessary.
Wannsee Conference
Women, children, the
old & the sick were to
be sent for ‘special
treatment.’
The young and fit would go
through a process called
‘destruction through work.’
On arrival the Jews
would go through a
process called
‘selection.’
How was the Final
Solution going to
be organised?
The remaining
Jews were to be
shipped to
‘resettlement
areas’ in the
East.
Conditions in the Ghettos were
designed to be so bad that many
die whilst the rest would be
willing to leave these areas in the
hope of better conditions
Shooting was too
inefficient as the bullets
were needed for the war
effort
Jews were to be
rounded up and put
into transit camps
called Ghettoes
The Jews living in
these Ghettos were to
be used as a cheap
source of labour.
2. Gas Vans
- trucks specially built with
a hose empting the
exhaust fumes into the
back of the truck.
- Trucks could hold 90
people in the back and it
took around 15 minutes
for them to succumb the
fumes.
3. Gas Chambers and
Crematoriums
Groups targeted for
extermination:
1. Jews
2. Gypsies
“Contaminated” Germans:
3. Mentally ill
4. Physical Deformities
5. Criminals
6. Homosexual
The Death Camps
- SS engineers designed death camps in
Poland
- A Death camp was NOT a concentration camp
- Death camps had no facilities to house
prisoners, just gas chambers
- These camps were capable of doing murder in
assembly-line fashion
- Gassing was the main murder method in these
camps
Auschwitz
- the largest Nazi Death Camp
- it had 4 giant-sized gas chambers designed to
hold 2,000 people at once
- This camp used a new type of gas known as
Zyklon B
- This chemical could kill 2,000 people in 5-6
minutes
- Auschwitz "processed" 12,000 Jews every day
- They murdered, reduced to ashes, and shipped
all their belongings (glasses, tools, clothing,
jewelry, money, etc) to collection centers within
24-hrs.
Gas Chambers
- most victims walked willingly into the gas
chambers because they had no idea
they were going to die.
- prisoners were given work permits and
told they were being transported to work
camps
- The Nazis would put food on the trains
to trick prisoners to get on board
Tricking prisoners into the
Chambers
- after arriving at the camps weak/sick
prisoners were told to board "Red
cross" trucks for transport to hospitals
(they were taken to the gas chambers)
- Massive gas chamber buildings were
labeled BATHS
- Prisoners were told they would be
taking showers to freshen up before
going into the work camps
- Prisoners would undress and enter large
rooms with shower head, towels and
soap
- Once the doors were shut and sealed
the lights were turned out and the gas
was pumped in
- After 10 - 30 minutes exhaust fans
would be turned on to empty out the gas
and prepare for clean up
-Bodies would be taken to elevators
which carried the corpses to the
crematoria below
The outside of the Gas Chamber
Notice the Ovens easy located near the Gas Chambers
Shoes waiting to be processed by the
sonderkommando
Taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz Museum. This represents one
day's collection at the peak of the gassings, about twenty five thousand pairs.
Nazi Medical Experiments
- SS doctors used prisoners as guinea
pigs for medical experimentation
Purpose of medical experiments:
1. survival of military personnel
- experiments tested human endurance
- How long can a man survive in freezing
seawater?
- At what altitude do lungs burst under pressure?
- experimental treatments for wounds
2. Testing New Medication
- what treatments work best on infectious disease?
3. Genetic Experiments
- How do we speed up production of the
"master race"?
- How do we eliminate genetic flaws? (dwarfs)
Dr. Josef Mengele
- known as the “Angel of Death”
- based at Auschwitz
- in charge of genetic
experiments
- he would be there when the
trains arrived to select his
subjects for testing
Twins experiments at
Auschwitz
- Mengele had twin shipped here for study
- they wanted to understand multiple
births and how they could use it to
speed up the master race
- twins were measured, killed (injection),
and dissected for the purpose of gaining
"scientific data"
Jewish Resistance
Why didn't all the Jews resist the Nazi's?
- remember the Jews had no weapons
- they wanted to live, so they dared not
rebel
- violence was against the religious beliefs
of the strict Orthodox Jews
Passive Resistance
- some Jews defied the Germans, without
using force
- Jews committed sabotage in the
factories
- making faulty parts or ammunition
In Hiding
- a number of Jews escaped capture by hiding
- attics, closets, cellars, barns
- most received help in the form of food and
shelter from non-Jewish citizens
Armed Resistance
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April May 1943)
- Jews resist attempt to liquidate the
ghetto
- used stolen weapons and
homemade explosives to attack
Nazi troops
- 15,000 Jews were killed in the
battle and the
remaining 50,000 were shipped to
death camps
Sobibor Concentration Camp
- October 1943
- several hundred prisoners attacked the
guards with stolen weapons and ran out the
front gate into the woods.
- many were captured but 200 did escape
- the camp was ordered closed after this
incident
Liberation of the Camps