Transcript The HOLOCAUST - stefthegator

The HOLOCAUST
By: Mrs. Chapman
World War II
• http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_nm.php?la
ng=en&ModuleId=10005137&MediaId=3376
Adolf Hitler salutes the crowd
from his open car during the
Reichsparteitag (Reich Party Day)
parade in Nuremberg. (September
4-10, 1934)
What is the Holocaust?
• The Holocaust refers to a specific genocidal event in
twentieth-century history: the state-sponsored, systematic
persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi
Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews
were the primary victims—6 million were murdered;
Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for
destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national
reasons.
• http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/guidelines/ind
ex.utp?content=guide1.htm
Holocaust (cont.)
The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period
from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of
Germany, to May 8, 1945 (VE Day), when the war in Europe
ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to
progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led to the murder
of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the
destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths
represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of
world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the
fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they
were the victims of Germany's deliberate and systematic attempt
to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan
Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung).
Jewish Population Distribution
Casualties During Holocaust
USSR1,100,000
Poland3,000,000
Romania287,000
Greece67,000
Czech260,000
Austria50,000
Italy7,680
Yugoslavia63,300
Lithuania143,000
Hungary569,000
Latvia71,500
Denmark60
Belgium28,900
France77,320
Estonia1,100
Finland7
Holocaust History
• In 1933, the Jewish population of
Europe stood at over nine million.
Most European Jews lived in
countries that Nazi Germany (the
Third Reich) would occupy or
influence during World War II. The
Nazis established concentration
camps to imprison Jews, other
people targeted on ethnic or
“racial” grounds, and political
opponents. Germany invaded
Poland on September 1, 1939,
beginning World War II. Over the
next two years, German forces
conquered most of Europe.
Outline of Holocaust
• Propaganda: “The Jews
Are Our Misfortune”
(1933)
• The Jews Are Isolated
from Society (1935)
• Kristallnacht (1938)
• The Jews Are Confined
to Ghettos (1939)
• The “Final Solution”
(1941)
• Liberation (1945)
Auschwitz memorial service in
Poland. Over 1.1 million died in
Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
Nazi Propaganda
• Cover of the antiSemitic German
children’s book, Der
Giftpilz
• (The Poisonous
Mushroom). United
States Holocaust
Memorial Museum
#40000
Kristallnacht
• Kristallnacht--literally, "Crystal Night"--is usually
translated from German as the "Night of Broken
Glass"; it refers to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of
November 9 and 10, 1938. The pogrom occurred
throughout Germany, which by then included both
Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
Hundreds of synagogues all over the German Reich
were attacked, vandalized, looted, and destroyed. Many
were set ablaze.
Jewish Ghettos
• Before WWII, Warsaw was
the center of Jewish life and
culture in Poland. During the
war, the Nazis established
400 ghettos and forced Jews
to live in miserable and
crowded conditions. The
largest ghetto was in Warsaw
where over 400,000 Jews
struggled to survive.
Warsaw Ghetto in Poland
Concentration Camps- Final Solution
• Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941,
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass-murder
operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist
party officials. More than a million Jewish men, women, and
children were murdered by these units, usually in mass shootings.
Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany deported millions more
Jews from occupied territories to extermination camps, where
they murdered them in specially developed killing facilities using
poison gas. At the largest killing center, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
transports of Jews arrived almost daily from across Europe.
Concentration Camp Pictures
Jewish women at forced labor on "Industry Street"
in the Plaszow concentration camp.
Newly arrived prisoners, with shaven heads, stand at
attention in their civilian clothes during a roll call in the
Buchenwald concentration camp.
Former prisoners of the "little camp" in Buchenwald stare out from the
wooden bunks in which they slept three to a "bed." Elie Wiesel is
pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to the
vertical beam. (April 16, 1945)
Auschwitz “danger” sign by an electric fence.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Auschwitz played a central
role in the Final Solution, the
Nazis plan to annihilate the
Jews in Europe. The Nazis
exported Jews from nearly
every country in Europe to
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
killing center in Poland. In
all, at 1.1 million Jews were
killed and tens of thousands
of others were killed here.
View of the entrance to the
main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I).
The gate bears the motto
"Arbeit Macht Frei"
(Work makes one free).
Auschwitz-Birkenau Photos
Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia undergo a
selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
View of the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau; taken
from inside the camp.
Belongings of Auschwitz inmates: suitcases
found after liberation (the suitcases had not
been shipped to Germany).
Corpses of Auschwitz prisoners in block
11 of the main camp (Auschwitz I).
Liberation of Auschwitz
The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest
extermination and concentration camp, in
January 1945. The Nazis had forced the
majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march
westward (in what would become known as
"death marches"), and Soviet soldiers found
only several thousand emaciated prisoners
alive when they entered the camp. There
was abundant evidence of mass murder in
Auschwitz. The retreating Germans had
destroyed most of the warehouses in the
camp, but in the remaining ones the Soviets
found personal belongings of the victims.
They discovered, for example, hundreds of
thousands of men's suits, more than
800,000 women's outfits, and more than
14,000 pounds of human hair.
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10005131&MediaId=1100
Liberation Notes
Liberators confronted unspeakable
conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles
of corpses lay unburied. Only after the
liberation of these camps was the full
scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the
world. The small percentage of inmates
who survived resembled skeletons
because of the demands of forced labor
and the lack of food, compounded by
months and years of maltreatment. Many
were so weak that they could hardly
move. Disease remained an ever-present
danger, and many of the camps had to be
burned down to prevent the spread of
epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced
a long and difficult road to recovery.
Soon after liberation,
camp survivors from
Buchenwald's
"Children's Block 66"--a
special barracks for
children. Germany, after
April 11, 1945.
We Shall Never Forget!