Transcript Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945

24.3: Holocaust
Objective: Understand the fate of
Jews and other “enemies” under the
Third Reich
9,508,340 Jews in Europe before WWII
5,962,129 killed by Nazis = 63% of population
Jews are half of 11 million Holocaust victims
HOLOCAUST
• 1933 – Nazis open concentration camps
• 11/9/1938 – Kristallnacht
• 10/1939 – euthanasia of “undesirables” in hospitals
• 3/1941 – SS Einsatzgruppen (murder squads) formed
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/einsatz.html
7/1941- Hitler urges “final solution” to “Jewish Question”
   GENOCIDE
• 12/1941 – gassing of Jews, Gypsies, Catholics begins
http://www.2goglobal.com/2GoChronicals/2%20Go%20Photos/Europe/Poland/auschwitz_ii.htm
http://timewitnesses.org/english/Kristall.html
Jews arrested during Kristallnacht line up for roll call at the Buchenwald
concentration camp. November 1938. Lorenz C. Schmuhl Papers,
USHMM Archives
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/genocide/racial_state_01.shtml
May 13, 1939
In Hamburg, 1,000 Jewish refugees board the SS St. Louis, a German
ocean liner, for trip to Cuba, where they hope to find temporary refuge.
Cuba and Miami turn them away. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/timeline.html
What were the reasons the US gave
for turning away Jewish refugees?
Do you think that the US was
justified in not allowing more Jewish
immigrants to immigrate?
Jewish mother and son being rounded up by Nazis
Jewish mother and son being rounded up by Nazis
Hitler ordered the "Final Solution"--the extermination of Europe's Jews--soon after
the United States entered the war. In this picture, German troops arrest residents of
the Warsaw ghetto for deportation to concentration camps. Few would survive the
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Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
camps where over six million Jews died. (YIVO Institute for Jewish
What do you notice about the locations of death camps and
concentration camps?
How do you explain the difference?
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945
When the British liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Hanover,
Germany, in April of 1945, they found this mass grave. It held the remains of
thousands of Holocaust victims who had been starved, gassed, and machine-gunned
by their Nazi jailers. This photograph and many others provide irrefutable proof of
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
the Holocaust's savagery. (Imperial War Museum)
CAUSES
EFFECTS
The Holocaust
What lessons should we learn
from the Holocaust?
Could it ever happen again?
SOVIET WAR CRIMES:
KATYN MASSACRE
"In favor," wrote Soviet leader
Josef Stalin in thick blue pencil on
secret police chief Lavrenti Beria's
March 5, 1940, note condemning to
execution without trial 24,700
Polish officers, gendarmes, officials
and landlords captured by the Red
Army in September 1939, when
Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union divided Poland. The secret
document was also signed by other
members of the Communist Party
Central Committe's Politburo. In
April and May 1940, at different
locations across the western flank
of the Soviet Union, 21,857 Poles
were executed and buried at secret
locations in the woods.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, 5/20/9