Transcript my holocaust presentation

The Holocaust
In words and pictures taken from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Web Site: www.ushmm.org
The Holocaust
• the systematic, bureaucratic, statesponsored persecution and murder of
approximately six million Jews by the
Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Prewar photograph of three Jewish children with their
babysitter. Two of the children perished in 1942. Warsaw,
Poland, 1925-1926.
Two German Jewish families at a gathering before the war. Only two people
in this group survived the Holocaust. Germany, 1928.
A Jewish family in the Piotrkow Trybunalski ghetto. All those
pictured died in the Holocaust. Poland, 1940.
Two young
cousins shortly
before they were
smuggled out of
the Kovno ghetto.
A Lithuanian
family hid the
children and both
girls survived the
war. Kovno,
Lithuania, August
1943.
Portrait of members of a Hungarian Jewish family. They were deported
to and killed in Auschwitz soon after this photo was taken. Kapuvar,
Hungary, June 8, 1944.
Word Play
• "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin
meaning "sacrifice by fire.“
• The Nazis frequently used euphemistic
language to disguise the true nature of
their crimes. They used the term “Final
Solution” to refer to their plan to annihilate
the Jewish people.
Genocide
• Genocide is a term created during the Holocaust and declared an
international crime in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The
Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed
with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The specific "intent to destroy" particular groups is unique to
genocide. A closely related category of international law, crimes
against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks
against civilians.
Why?
• The Nazis, who came to power in
Germany in January 1933, believed that
Germans were "racially superior" and that
the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien
threat to the so-called German racial
community.
“Asocials”- outside the norm
• During the era of the Holocaust, German
authorities also targeted other groups
because of their perceived "racial
inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled,
and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles,
Russians, and others). Other groups were
persecuted on political, ideological, and
behavioral grounds, among them
Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's
Witnesses, and homosexuals.
THIRD REICH: OVERVIEW
• The Nazi rise to power brought an end to
the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary
democracy established in Germany after
World War I. Following the appointment of
Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30,
1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as
the Third Reich) quickly became a regime
in which Germans enjoyed no guaranteed
basic rights.
Germans cheer Adolf Hitler as he leaves the Hotel Kaiserhof just after
being sworn in as chancellor. Berlin, Germany, January 30, 1933.
• After a suspicious fire in the
Reichstag (the German
Parliament), on February 28,
1933, the government issued a
decree which suspended
constitutional civil rights and
created a state of emergency
in which official decrees could
be enacted without
parliamentary confirmation.
• In the first months of Hitler's
chancellorship, the Nazis instituted a
policy of "coordination"--the alignment of
individuals and institutions with Nazi goals.
Culture, the economy, education, and law
all came under Nazi control. The Nazi
regime also attempted to "coordinate" the
German churches and, although not
entirely successful, won support from a
majority of Catholic and Protestant
clergymen.
POWER
• Extensive propaganda was used to spread the
regime's goals and ideals. Upon the death of
German president Paul von Hindenburg in
August 1934, Hitler assumed the powers of the
presidency. The army swore an oath of personal
loyalty to him. Hitler's dictatorship rested on his
position as Reich President (head of state),
Reich Chancellor (head of government), and
Fuehrer (head of the Nazi party). According to
the "Fuehrer principle," Hitler stood outside the
legal state and determined matters of policy
himself.
How did Hitler get everyone on his
side?
• the use of propaganda to spread the
ideals of National Socialism -- among
them racism and antisemitism.
• the Nazi message was successfully
communicated through art, music, theater,
films, books, radio, educational materials,
and the press.
German children read an anti-Jewish propaganda book titled DER
GIFTPILZ ( "The Poisonous Mushroom"). The girl on the left
holds a companion volume, the translated title of which is "Trust
No Fox." Germany, ca. 1938.
Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between an
"Aryan" and a black woman. The caption states: "The
result! A loss of racial pride." Germany, prewar.
This image originates from a film produced by the Reich
Propaganda Ministry. It is captioned: "A moral and religious
conception of life demands the prevention of hereditarily ill
offspring." Nazi propaganda aimed to create public support for
the compulsory sterilization effort.
A Nazi propaganda
poster encourages
healthy Germans to
raise a large family.
The caption, in
German, reads:
"Healthy Parents
have Healthy
Children." Germany,
date uncertain.
Nazi
propaganda
poster warning
Germans about
the dangers of
east European
"subhumans."
Germany, date
uncertain.
"Propaganda tries to force a doctrine
on the whole people... Propaganda
works on the general public from the
standpoint of an idea and makes them
ripe for the victory of this idea."
-Adolf Hitler
The Nazi regime used propaganda
effectively to mobilize the German
population to support its wars of
conquest until the very end of the
regime. Nazi propaganda was
likewise essential to motivating
those who implemented the mass
murder of the European Jews and of
other victims of the Nazi regime. It
also served to secure the
acquiescence of millions of others -as bystanders -- to racially targeted
persecution and mass murder.
The Stages
• Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the
persecution and segregation of the Jews
was implemented in stages.
Early Stages of Persecution
• During the first six years of Hitler's
dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak
of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of
more than 400 decrees and regulations
that restricted all aspects of their public
and private lives. Many of those laws were
national ones that had been issued by the
German administration and affected all
Jews.
• The first wave of legislation, from 1933 to
1934, focused largely on limiting the
participation of Jews in German public life.
1935-Nuremberg laws
• Excluded German Jews from Reich
citizenship and prohibited them from
marrying or having sexual relations with
persons of "German or German-related
blood."
• deprived of most political rights. Jews
were disenfranchised (that is, they had no
formal expectation to the right to vote) and
could not hold public office.
• The Nuremberg Laws did not identify a
"Jew" as someone with particular religious
beliefs. Instead, the first amendment to the
Nuremberg Laws defined anyone who had
three or four Jewish grandparents as a
Jew, regardless of whether that individual
recognized himself or herself as a Jew or
belonged to the Jewish religious
community.
"Aryanization”
• Government agencies at all levels aimed to exclude
Jews from the economic sphere of Germany by
preventing them from earning a living.
• Jews were required to register their domestic and foreign
property and assets, a prelude to the gradual
expropriation of their material wealth by the state.
• Likewise, the German authorities intended to "Aryanize"
all Jewish businesses, a process involving the dismissal
of Jewish workers and managers, as well as the transfer
of companies and enterprises to non-Jewish Germans,
who bought them at prices officially fixed well below
market value.
1937-1938
• In 1937 and 1938, the government forbade Jewish doctors to treat
non-Jews, and revoked the licenses of Jewish lawyers to practice
law.
• Jews were barred from all public schools and universities, as well as
from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews
were forbidden to enter designated "Aryan" zones.
• The government required Jews to identify themselves in ways that
would permanently separate them from the rest of the population. In
August 1938, German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939,
Jewish men and women bearing first names of "non-Jewish" origin
had to add "Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their given names. All
Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish
heritage, and, in the autumn of 1938, all Jewish passports were
stamped with an identifying letter "J".
The Ghettos
• ghettos were city districts (often enclosed)
in which the Germans concentrated the
municipal and sometimes regional Jewish
population and forced them to live under
miserable conditions.
• The Germans established at least 1,000
ghettos in German-occupied and annexed
Poland and the Soviet Union alone.
What happened to the ghettos?
• With the implementation of the "Final Solution"
(the plan to murder all European Jews)
beginning in late 1941, the Germans
systematically destroyed the ghettos.
• The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot
ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby
or deported them, usually by train, to killing
centers where they were murdered. German SS
and police authorities deported a small minority
of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and
concentration camps.
Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are led by German
soldiers to the assembly point for deportation.
Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Mobile Killing Units
• Einsatzgruppen: squads composed primarily of
German SS and police personnel.
• By autumn 1941, the SS and police introduced
mobile gas vans. These paneled trucks with the
exhaust pipe reconfigured to pump poisonous
carbon monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing
those locked within, were to complement
ongoing shooting operations.
Members of an Einsatzkommando (mobile killing squad) before shooting a
Jewish youth. The boy's murdered family lies in front of him; the men to the left
are ethnic Germans aiding the squad. Slarow, Soviet Union, July 4, 1941.
“Sardine Packing”
• Often with the help of local informants and interpreters,
Jews in a given locality were identified and taken to
collection points. Thereafter they were marched or
transported by truck to the execution site, where
trenches had been prepared. In some cases the captive
victims had to dig their own graves. After the victims had
handed over their valuables and undressed, men,
women, and children were shot, either “military style,”
standing before the open trench, or lying face down in
the prepared pit, in a manner that came to be known
irreverently as “sardine packing.”
CONCENTRATION CAMPS, 19331939
• The term concentration camp refers to a
camp in which people are detained or
confined, usually under harsh conditions
and without regard to legal norms of arrest
and imprisonment that are acceptable in a
constitutional democracy.
• The first concentration camps in Germany
were established soon after Hitler's
appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In
the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The
SA (Sturmabteilungen; commonly known as
Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel;
Protection Squadrons -- the elite guard of the
Nazi party), the police, and local civilian
authorities organized numerous detention
camps to incarcerate real and perceived
political opponents of Nazi policy.
Arrival of political prisoners at the Oranienburg
concentration camp. Oranienburg, Germany, 1933.
Roll call for newly arrived prisoners, mostly Jews arrested
during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), at the
Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany,
1938.
EXPANSION OF THE CAMP
SYSTEM 1939
• As Nazi Germany expanded by bloodless
conquest between 1938 and 1939, the
numbers of those labeled as political
opponents and social deviants increased,
requiring the establishment of new
concentration camps.
• The concentration camps increasingly became
sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted
groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi
Germany. They also came to serve as holding
centers for a rapidly expanding pool of forced
laborers deployed on SS construction projects,
SS-commissioned extractive industrial sites,
and, by 1942, in the production of armaments,
weapons, and related goods for the German war
effort.
The Final Solution…
• Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German
authorities deported millions of Jews from
Germany, from occupied territories, and
from the countries of many of its Axis allies
to ghettos and to killing centers, often
called extermination camps, where they
were murdered in specially developed
gassing facilities.
Killing centers
• also referred to as "extermination camps"
or "death camps“ were almost exclusively
"death factories."
• German SS and police murdered nearly
2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either
by asphyxiation with poison gas or by
shooting.
Hairbrushes of victims, found soon after the liberation of Auschwitz. Poland,
after January 27, 1945.
• Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the camps
were sent immediately to death in the gas chambers
(with the exception of very small numbers chosen for
special work teams known as Sonderkommandos). The
largest killing center was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which by
spring 1943 had four gas chambers (using Zyklon B
poison gas) in operation. At the height of the
deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at
Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Over a million Jews and
tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners
of war were killed there by November 1944.
Death Marches
• In the final months of the war, SS guards
moved camp inmates by train or on forced
marches, often called “death marches,” in
an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation
of large numbers of prisoners.
A view of the death march from Dachau passing through villages in the
direction of Wolfratshausen. German civilians secretly photographed several
death marches from the Dachau concentration camp as the prisoners
moved slowly through the Bavarian towns of Gruenwald, Wolfratshausen,
and Herbertshausen. Few civilians gave aid to the prisoners on the death
marches. Germany, April 1945.
• During these death marches, the SS guards
brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following their
explicit orders, they shot hundreds of prisoners
who collapsed or could not keep pace on the
march, or who could no longer disembark from
the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died
of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced
marches were especially common in late 1944
and 1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to
camps deeper within Germany.
When did the reign end?
• As Soviet troops fought their way towards
the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed
suicide on April 30, 1945.
• The Allies defeated Nazi Germany and
forced a German surrender on May 8,
1945.
Liberation
• Soviet forces, British forces, and American
Forces liberated the camps and those that
survived the death marches survived
• 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.
• Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult
road to recovery.
Soon after
liberation, a
Soviet
physician
examines
Auschwitz
camp
survivors.
Poland,
February 18,
1945.
Emaciated survivors of the Buchenwald concentration
camp soon after the liberation of the camp. Germany,
after April 11, 1945.
American military personnel view corpses in the Buchenwald concentration
camp. This photograph was taken after the liberation of the camp. Germany,
April 18, 1945.
Liberated
prisoners
demonstrate the
overcrowded
conditions at the
Buchenwald
concentration
camp, Germany,
April 23, 1945.
REMEMBER
"...to remain silent and indifferent is the
greatest sin of all...“ ~ Elie Wiesel
Honor the dead
Wiesel at age 15
Prevent this from happening again
Bert and Anne Bochove, who hid 37 Jews in their pharmacy in Huizen, an
Amsterdam suburb, pose here with their children. The two were named
"Righteous Among the Nations." The Netherlands, 1944 or 1945.
Dr. Joseph Jaksy,
who rescued 25
Jews during the
war. He provided
them with hiding
places, money,
medicine and
forged
identification
papers. Jaksy was
named "Righteous
Among the
Nations."
Czechoslovakia,
prewar.