Transcript File

The Holocaust
1933-1945
What was the Holocaust?
What does that word mean?
“The state-sponsored, systematic
persecution and annihilation of
European Jewry by Nazi Germany
between 1933 and 1945…Jews
were the primary victims but
other groups were targeted.”
Germans called it the
“Final Solution.”
Other groups included:
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Gypsies
the Handicapped/Mentally Ill
Poles (Polish people for various reasons)
Homosexuals
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Soviet Prisoners of War
Political dissidents (people who didn’t
agree with Hitler)
"First they came for the Communists but I
was not a Communist so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Socialists and the
Trade Unionists but I was not one of them,
so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Jews but I was not
Jewish so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no
one left to speak out for me."
--Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
The Jewish Population in Europe, 1939
In September 1935, Hitler issued the
“Nuremberg Law for the Protection
of German Blood and German
Honor”
These laws were the first signs of
Hitler’s plan to carry out his Master
Race Theory.
This law included the following
provisions:
• No mixed marriages between Jew
and German.
• Jews could not employ a German
woman, under the age of 45, in
their home.
• Jews are not allowed to fly the Reich
or National flag nor wear the
German colors
This was only the beginning…
Soon the
exclusion of
Jews could be
seen
everywhere…
A motorcyclist
sees a sign on
the outskirts of
a village which
reads “Jews not
welcome here.”
Stores put up anti-Jewish signs to show their
support of the Jewish Boycott!
Stores owned by Jews were marked
with the Star of David…
increasing segregation.
KRISTALLNACHT:
“The Night of Broken Glass”
*November 9-10, 1938*
A nation-wide program where the
Nazis burned synagogues, looted
Jewish homes & businesses, arrested
approximately 30,000 Jewish men,
and killed at least 91 people.
According to
another of
Hitler’s laws,
Jews were
forced to mark
themselves
with a Star of
David symbol
at all times.
BADGES
OF
HATE
In many cities that had large Jewish
populations, Hitler would first organize the
Jewish people into a GHETTO.
This was a restricted section of town where
all of the Jews were forced to move and live.
This section was then walled in.
There was never enough food, jobs, or
housing. Sanitation was disgusting and
disease wide spread.
The most famous of these ghettos was the
Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.
Eventually, Hitler forcibly moved
the ghetto populations to labor
and extermination camps…
THE JOURNEY TO DEATH…
• The people were packed in wooden train
crates.
• There was little air and people died in
route to the camps.
• They did not know where they were
going, but most had heard the rumors.
• They would either be taken to a camp or
taken out of town and shot.
Hitler’s Helpers
The Einsatzgruppen
was the name
given to Hitler’s
mobile “killing
squads.”
Their job was to
hunt down and
kill Jews and other
“undesirables.”
STOP HERE
Video clips of life in Warsaw
Ghetto and departure to camps
from The Pianist.
If the people survived the train
trip and their destination was in
fact a camp—usually a labor or
extermination camp…
they were turned over to the SS
guards at the camp upon arrival.
The sign above the entrance to the camp reads
“Work Makes One Free”
Major Nazi Labor/Death Camps
• Major Killing centers/death camps:
– Sobibor, Poland
– Belzec, Poland
– Treblinka, Poland
– Auschwitz, Poland
– Chelmno, Poland
– Majkanek, Poland
LIFE INSIDE THE CAMPS….
Daily Roll Call
Forced labor
Crowded Sleeping Barracks
Medical Experimentation
• Prisoners were also used for brutal
medical experimentation.
• Example: victims were injected with
deadly germs in order to study the effect
of the disease on different groups of
people.
• Experiments were conducted on children,
twins, the mentally and physically
disabled, etc.
Dr. Josef Mengele
was the most famous
of these “doctors.”
Called the
“Angel of Death”
As the War went on and Germany
began to lose…Hitler pushed for the
complete extermination of all prisoners
in the camps. Guards worked 24 hours
a day trying to rid the world of their
“enemy” prisoners and to be sure no
evidence of their acts survived .
Gassing prisoners became the preferred
method of execution.
Gassing was
easier on the
guards and it
saved
ammunition.
Prisoners were
told to undress
and led into the
“shower”
chambers.
Then, the
bodies would
be piled and
eventually
burned.
Crematoriums
burned all
day and
night.
This is all that would remain…shoes, clothes
At Auschwitz they found more
than 7 tons of human hair…
The Death Marches
• As the Allies neared, the camps were
evacuated.
• SS guards began to take the prisoners on
death marches to Auschwitz.
• The marches lasted months through the
winter snow into the Spring of 1945.
• The prisoners were given little food, only
wore the clothes on their back when
leaving the camp, and lived with the
constant threat of execution.
The Allies moved further into the
occupied territories and eventually into
Germany…
There, they found the remaining
camps, the death marchers, the
survivors, and the remnants of this
atrocity.
The Soviets liberated the first camp in
1944.
The Allied soldiers were so disgusted
with what they found that they often
made civilians from the neighboring
towns tour the camps to bear witness to
what they had lived by and done
NOTHING about!
The U.S. State Department had known of the
actions of the Nazis since 1942
(perhaps earlier).
Gen. Eisenhower
inspecting camps
Some 30 million Europeans, soldiers
and civilians, were casualties of WW II.
Among these dead were some 6 million Jews,
victims of the Holocaust, along with millions
of Soviet prisoners of war, hundreds of
thousands of Roma (Gypsies), Poles, and
disabled people, thousands of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, homosexuals, and others…
Genocide
Genocide is the term given to the
deliberate and systematic
destruction of a racial, political, or
cultural group.
The Holocaust was exactly that…
And genocide continues today….
MODERN DAY GENOCIDE:
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Bangladesh (1971)
Burundi (1972)
East Timor (1975-1979: 1/3 of population)
Cambodia (1975-1979: 1 million plus)
Guatemala (1981-1983)
Iraq (1987-1988)
Bosnia (1992-1995)
Rwanda (1994)
Sudan (Darfur) (present day)
“Don’t hate anybody. Just don’t hate
anybody. Look at what happened
from the hatred. Because somebody
has a different religion or a different
race, you shouldn’t look at that. You
should look at the person, the human
being, what is inside.”
--Share Braun, a Survivor