Transcript document

The Holocaust
In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21
countries of Europe that would be occupied by
Nazi Germany during World War 2. By 1945
two out of every three European Jews had been
killed.
Anti -Semitism
This is the term given to
political, social and
economic agitation against
Jews. In simple terms it
means ‘Hatred of Jews’.
Aryan Race
This was the name of what Hitler
believed was the perfect race. These
were people with full German blood,
blonde hair and blue eyes.
For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the
Christ -killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of
almost every European country. The way they were treated in
England in the thirteenth century is a typical example.
In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge.
In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London.
This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth
century, especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where
the Jewish population was very large.
After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the
defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the
economic depression which followed. Many Germans were poor
and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the
Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.
“Until September 14, 1939 my life
was typical of a young Jewish boy
in that part of the world in that
period of time.
I lived in a Jewish community
surrounded by gentiles. Aside
from my immediate family, I had
many relatives and knew all the
town people, both Jews and
gentiles. Almost two weeks after
the outbreak of the war and shortly
after my Bar Mitzvah, my world
exploded.
WHY?
In the course of the next five and a
half years I lost my entire family
and almost everyone I ever knew.
Death, violence and brutality
became a daily occurrence in my
life while I was still a young
teenager.”
Leonard Lerer, 1991
Steps to the Holocaust
A Timeline
• Hitler comes to Power
• New legislation set to exclude Jews from
the life of Germany.
– Laws were passed banning Jews from working
in professional capacities; schools were
established exclusively for Jewish children and
quotas limited their entry into Universities.
– They could neither join the army nor participate
in the artistic life of the country.
• This Nazi propaganda
poster from 1932 links
Jews with the
development of
capitalism, communism,
& socialism.
NUREMBERG LAW FOR THE PROTECTION OF
GERMAN BLOOD AND GERMAN HONOUR,
SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
• Moved by the understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential
condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by
the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German Nation for
all times, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following Law, which is
promulgated herewith:
– §1
1. Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden.
Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if conducted abroad to circumvent this
law.
2. Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the State Prosecutor.
– §2
1.
Extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood is
forbidden.
– §3
1.
Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of German or related
blood who are under 45 years old.
– §4
1.
2.
Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or National flag or to display the Reich colours.
They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colours. The exercise
of this right is protected by the State.
– §5
1.
2.
3.
Any person who violates the prohibition under § 1 will be punished by a prison
sentence with hard labour.
A male who violates the prohibition under § 2 will be punished with a prison
sentence with or without hard labour.
Any person violating the provisions under § § 3 or 4 will be punished with a prison
sentence of up to one year and a fine, or with one or the other of these penalties.
– §6
1.
The Reich Minister of the Interior, in co-ordination with the Deputy of the Führer
and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the Legal and Administrative
regulations required to implement and complete this Law.
– § 7 The Law takes effect on the day following promulgation except for
§ 3, which goes into force on January 1, 1936.
Why was this allowed?
• "Since we have no racial problem, we are not desirous
of importing one."
– Australian delegate, Evian Conference.
• "I can only hope and expect that the other world, which
has such deep sympathy for these criminals, will at least
be generous enough to convert this sympathy into
practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these
criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I
care, even on luxury ships"
– Adolph Hitler March 1938

From 1938 onwards, it was obvious to Jews that they should leave Germany as soon as
possible. The stage of expulsion had started. Although half of the Jews left Germany before
1941, over half a million remained, at the mercy of Hitler and the Nazis.
Number of Jewish Refugees
Allowed
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
US: 200,000
Palestine: 125,000
Britain: 70,000
Argentina: 50,000
Brazil: 27,000
China: 25,000
Bolivia and Chile: 14,000
CANADA: 5,000
• Germans invaded Poland
• The millions of Jews who had fled to Poland to
escape the Nazis now suddenly came under
Germany's control.
• Over three million Jews lived in Poland
• The Nazi's first act was to round up all Jews and
send them into ghettos.
– These were small areas of towns which were sealed
off and allocated to the Jews.
– Life within the ghetto was intolerable
• overcrowding, hunger and disease
 Despite this, many Jews survived, thinking and
hoping that their suffering must one day cease.
Between 1939 and 1945
six million Jews were
murdered, along with
hundreds of thousands of
others, such as Gypsies,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
disabled and the
mentally ill.
Percentage of Jews killed in each country
A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS
USED BY THE NAZIS.
• KZ Dachau was the first concentration camp established in
Nazi Germany - the camp was opened on March 22, 1933.
• First inmates were primarily:
Political prisoners
Habitual Criminals
Social Democrats
Homosexuals
Communists
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Trade unionists
Beggars
• "On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with
an accommodation for 5000 persons. 'All Communists and—where
necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger
state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible
to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening
these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because
attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organise as
soon as they are released.”
Types of Camps
• Hostage camps (or death camps)
– Hostages were held and killed as reprisals.
• Labor camps
– Had to do hard physical labor under inhumane conditions and cruel treatment.
• POW camps:
– Prisoners of war were held after capture
– Endured torture and liquidation on a large scale.
• Camps for rehabilitation and re-education of Poles:
– Intelligentsia of the ethnic Poles were held, and "re-educated" according to Nazi
values as slaves.
• Transit and collection camps:
– camps where inmates were collected and routed to main camps, or temporarily held
(Durchgangslager or Dulag).
• Externmination Camps
Road to Death Camps
• In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of
handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous
gas. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in
June 1941, mobile killing units following in the wake of
the German Army began shooting massive numbers of
Jews and Gypsies in open fields and ravines on the
outskirts of conquered cities and towns.
• Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and
organized method of killing. Extermination centers were
established in occupied Poland with special apparatus
especially designed for mass murder.
 Giant death machines.
Part of a stockpile of Zyklon-B poison
gas pellets found at Majdanek death
camp.
Before poison gas was used ,
Jews were gassed in mobile gas
vans. Carbon monoxide gas
from the engine’s exhaust was
fed into the sealed rear
compartment. Victims were
dead by the time they reached
the burial site.
Smoke rises as the
bodies are burnt.
Auschwitz
• Largest numbers of European Jews were killed.
• By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B began
– where extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with
some estimates running as high as three million persons eventually
killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning.
– 9 out of 10 were Jews.
– Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and prisoners of all nationalities died in the
gas chambers.
• Private diaries of Goebbels and Himmler (developers of
Auschwitz) unearthed from the secret Soviet archives
show that Hitler personally ordered the mass extermination
of the Jews - as Goebbels wrote "With regards to the
Jewish question, the Fuhrer decided to make a clean sweep
..."
In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis
ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all
traces.
Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at
Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September
of 1941.
Children
• The number of children killed during the Holocaust is
not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of
children who died will never be known. Estimates range
as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure
includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of
thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of
institutionalized handicapped children.
• Plucked from their homes and stripped of their
childhoods, the children had witnessed the murder of
parents, siblings, and relatives. They faced starvation,
illness and brutal labor, until they were consigned to the
gas chambers.
16 of the 44 children taken
from a French children’s
home, sent to Auschwitz and
killed immediately upon
arrival.
ONLY 1 SURVIVED*
The Jewish Children Of Izieu
A group of
children at a
concentration
camp in Poland.
Problems with Liberation
• The first task for the liberators was to tackle this medical nightmare.
• Limited: Roughly 50,000 inmates still living, 20,000 were seriously or
critically ill.
• With those prisoners who seemed to stand some chance of living, the
medical teams first washed and deloused them, before disinfecting
them with DDT powder. I
• nmates were then admitted to a makeshift hospital established in the
camp.
• Here, the doctors attempted to rehydrate and feed them, while treating
their illnesses. Even so, many were just too ill to be saved.
– ... 13,000 Belsen inmates died after liberation.
• Some inmates had been starved for so long that they had lost the ability
to digest the rations that well-meaning British soldiers offered them;
within minutes of taking a biscuit, some inmates just passed away.
What to do with the bodies?
• Another task was to dispose of the 20,000 diseased bodies, in order to
contain the spread of typhus.
• The British forces made the surrendered German and Hungarian SS
camp guards carry the corpses into mass graves that had been dug by
British bulldozer teams.
– As punishment for their crimes, the camp guards were prevented from using
protective gloves, and consequently some of them contracted typhus and died.
• This method of burial soon proved too slow, and subsequently the
bulldozers simply shoveled the corpses into the graves.
• As the weeks went by the British steadily relocated the recovering
inmates to local housing commandeered from German civilians.
– As this process unfolded, the local populace were forced to inspect the camp, to see
for themselves the evils committed in their name.
Survivors
• Feared to return to their former homes because of the
anti-semitism they had suffered before.
– Some who returned home feared for their lives.
– In postwar Poland, for example, there were a number of violent
anti-Jewish riots.
• With few possibilities for emigration, tens of thousands
of homeless Holocaust survivors migrated westward to
other European territories liberated by the western
Allies.
• There they were housed in hundreds of refugee centers
and displaced persons (DP) camps such as BergenBelsen in Germany.
– The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
(UNRRA) and the occupying armies of the United States, Great
Britain, and France administered these camps.
Problems
• Opportunities for legal immigration to the
United States above the existing quota
restrictions were still limited.
• The British restricted immigration to
Palestine.
• Many borders in Europe were also closed to
these homeless people.
• With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish
displaced persons and refugees began streaming into the new sovereign
state.
– Possibly as many as 170,000 Jewish displaced persons and refugees had immigrated
to Israel by 1953.
• December 1945, President Truman issued a directive that loosened
quota restrictions on immigration to the U.S. of persons displaced by the
Nazi regime.
– Under this directive, more than 41,000 displaced persons immigrated to the United
States; approximately 28,000 were Jews.
– In 1948, the U.S. Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, which provided
approximately 400,000 U.S. immigration visas for displaced persons between
January 1, 1949, and December 31, 1952.
– Of the 400,000 displaced persons who entered the U.S. under the DP Act,
approximately 68,000 were Jews.
• Other Jewish refugees in Europe emigrated as displaced persons or
refugees to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, western Europe, Mexico,
South America, and South Africa.
Name
From
Age of
Death
Camp
Judith Schwed
Hungary
12
Auschwitz
Herta Scheer-Krygier
German
21
Auschwitz
Peter Winternitz
Czechoslovakia
21
Auschwitz
Henoch Kornfeld
Poland
3½
Belzec
Henny Schermann
Germany
30
Ravensbrueck
& Bernburg
Thomas Elek
Hungary
20
POW in Paris
Eva Heyman
Romania
13
Auschwitz
Erzsebet Markovics Katz
Hungary
40
Bergen-Belsen
Esther Morgansztern
Poland
15
Treblinka
Smiljka Ljoljic Visnjevac
Yugoslavia
30
Banjinca
Age of
Death
Name
From
Camp
Shulim Saleschutz
Poland
12
Belzec
Hela Szabszevicz
Poland
43
Lodz ghetto
Barbara Kertesz Nemeth
Hungary
34
Strasshof
Ilona Karfunkel Kalman
Hungary
38
Auschwitz
Welwel Wainkranc
Poland
24
Kaluszyn ghetto
Ethel Stern
Poland
24
Trawniki
Yves Oppert
France
35
POW at Etercy
Zuzana Gruenberger
Czechoslovakia
11
Auschwitz
Eva Brigitte Marum
Germany
26
Sobibor
Fischel Felman
Poland
31
Treblinka
NAME
From
Date of Birth Life during War
Jeannine Burk
Belgium
9/15/1939
Hidden Child
Shep Zitler
Lithuania
5/27/1917
Polish Soldier and
Prisoner of War
Eva Galler
Poland
1/1/1924
Escaped a Death
Train
Solomon Radasky
Poland
5/17/1910
Warsaw Ghetto and
Auschwitz
Isak Borenstein
Poland
5/5/1918
Prisoner of War
Joseph Sher
Poland
7/27/1917
Labor Camps
Esther Raab
Poland
1922
Sobibor
Joseph Bau
Poland
18 June 1920
Plaszow
Rivka Yosselevka
Belarus
Unknown
Zagrodski
Ghetto
NAME
From
Date of Birth
Life during War
Ernest Domby
Czechoslovakia
March 9, 1925
Theresienstadt
ghetto, Auschwitz,
Gross-Rosen
Franz Wohlfahrt
Austria
January 18, 1920
Rollwald Rodgau
Ruth (Huppert)
Elias
Czechoslovakia
October 6, 1922
Theresienstadt
ghetto, Auschwitz
Saul Ingber
Romania
April 16, 1921
Dachau
Arthur Karl Heinz
Oertelt
Germany
January 13, 1921
Theresienstadt
and Flossenbürg
Thomas
Buergenthal
Czechoslovakia
May 11, 1934
Auschwitz
Wolfgang Munzer
Germany
February 26, 1920 Auschwitz
Wolf Himmelfarb
Poland
June 19, 1927
Theresienstadt
Szlamach
Radoszynski
Poland
May 17, 1912
Auschwitz
To find out more on your
Victim or Survivor go to…
• http://go.fold3.com/holocaust_stories/
• http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/survivor
s.php
• http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/su
rvivor/index.html