Transcript Document 528501

Holocaust Notes
“To learn from history, we must record its events as
accurately and as
specifically as possible. We must use words with precision.”
Genocide
 The
deliberate killing of a large
group of people, especially those
of a particular ethnic group or
nation.
 Violent crimes committed
against groups with the intent to
destroy their existence.
The Holocaust:
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The Holocaust: 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 – six million were
murdered
Other victims were:
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Gypsies
the handicapped
Polish
Homosexuals
Jehovah's Witnesses
Soviet prisoners of war
Basically anyone who did not agree with the Nazi’s views or
who the Nazis decided were inferior.
The Holocaust
The term holocaust, without a capital
h, has a different meaning than
Holocaust with a capital H.
 The Holocaust refers to the statesponsored persecution and
annihilation of European Jews by
Nazi Germany,
 The term holocaust is defined as
complete destruction by fire or
burning, or any widespread
destruction/sacrifice by fire

Why is it important to learn about
the Holocaust?
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Gives you an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice,
racism, and stereotyping in any society.
It encourages tolerance of diversity in society.
Holocaust history demonstrates how a modern nation can
utilize its technological expertise and bureaucratic
infrastructure to implement destructive policies ranging from
social engineering to genocide.
A study of the Holocaust helps you think about the use and
abuse of power and the role and responsibilities of individuals,
organizations, and nations when confronted with civil rights
violations and/or policies of genocide.
Helps you to gain a perspective on how history happens and
how a convergence of factors can contribute to the
disintegration of civilized values. Part of one’s responsibility as
a citizen in a democracy is to learn to identify the danger signs
and to know when to react.
Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders and Rescuers

Victims - During the Holocaust, several groups of people were targeted
as victims. They were targeted because of who they were or because of
what they did.
 Perpetrators - Perpetrators were the people who committed and executed
the crimes against the various victim groups. People from all walks of life
and educational levels were perpetrators. This group had several reasons
for committing these crimes including a desire for power, financial gains,
displaced anger, an ideology of racial cleansing, and “following orders.”
 Bystanders - People who did not openly persecute the Jews and other
victim groups or did not actively help them are considered bystanders.
Many bystanders complied with the laws against Jews and other victim
groups; however, they tried to avoid terrorizing activities. Many were
fearful of the consequences for helping and/or profited from the
dispossession and murder of the Jews and others.
 Rescuers/Helpers - This group was the smallest group of people during
the Holocaust, but the most courageous. Rescuers took great personal
risk to help members of the persecuted groups. Rescuers were politically
driven, morally driven, or had established a relationship with a person or
group. They did not view victims as the enemy, but as human beings.
Pre-WWII
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Jews were living in every country in
Europe before the Nazis came into power
in 1933
Approximately 9 million Jews
Poland and the Soviet Union had the
largest populations
Jews could be found in all walks of life:
farmers, factory workers, business people,
doctors, teachers, and craftsmen
In Germany, there were about 500,000,
less than 1% of the German population.
Pre-War
Group portrait of members of the Jewish community of Sighet in
front of a wooden synagogue. 1930-1939.
Anti-Semitism
Definition: prejudice against, hatred
of, or discrimination against Jews as a
national, ethnic, religious or racial
group.
 Have faced prejudice and
discrimination for over 2,000 years.
 Were the scapegoats for many
problems, such as the “Black Death”
that killed thousands in Europe during
the Middle Ages.

Anti-Semitism: Historically

In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr
originated the term anti-Semitism, denoting
hatred of Jews
 Among the most common manifestations of
anti-Semitism throughout the ages were
pogroms (riots launched against Jews by local
residents and frequently encouraged by the
authorities).
 Pogroms were often incited by blood libels,
village rumors that Jews used the blood of
Christian children for ritual purposes.
Anti-Semitism in Germany
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The nineteenth century movement of German
philosophers, scholars, and artists led to the notion
of the Jews as “non-German.”
People who supported this idea provided
pseudoscientific backing. (a claim, belief or practice
which is falsely presented as scientific, but cannot be
reliably tested).
The Nazi party upheld these theories; they gained
popularity by spreading anti-Jewish propaganda.
Political leaders used anti-Semitism as a tool, relying
on the ideas of racial science to portray Jews as an
inferior race instead of a religion.
Anti-Semitism: Racism
In 1931, the SS established a Race and
Settlement Office to conduct race
“research”
 During the war, Nazi physicians
conducted bogus medical experiments
seeking to identify physical evidence of
Aryan superiority and non-Aryan
inferiority; the Nazis could not find
evidence for their theories of biological
racial differences among human beings.
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Weimar Republic

After Germany lost World War I, a new
government formed and became the Weimar
Republic. (1919-1933)
 The capitol was in the city of Weimar.
 Many Germans were upset not only that they
had lost the war but also that they had to make
reparations (repay) to all of the countries that
they had “damaged” in the war.
 The total bill that the Germans had to “pay”
was equivalent to nearly $70 billion.

The German army was also limited in size.
Weimar Republic

The German mark (their currency) became
worth less than the paper it was printed on
 Nearly 6 million Germans were
unemployed.
Adolf Hitler

With all of this unrest and fear, it offered fertile
ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi
party.
 Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who
attracted a wide following of Germans desperate
for change.
 He promised the disenchanted a better life and a
new and glorious Germany.
 The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed,
young people, and members of the lower middle
class (small store owners, office employees,
craftsmen, and farmers).
Adolf Hitler

On January 30, 1933 Hitler was
appointed chancellor, the head of the
German government.
Nazi Rule

Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas, the
Nazis abolished basic freedoms and sought
to create a "Volk" community: one that
united all social classes and regions of
Germany behind Hitler.
 The Third Reich (Germany) quickly became a
police state, where individuals were subject
to arrest and imprisonment.
 Hitler and other Nazi propagandists were
highly successful in directing the
population’s anger and fear against the Jews
Nazi Rule

Organizations, political parties, and state
governments were forced to align with Nazi goals and
were placed under Nazi leadership.
 Culture, the economy, education, and law came
under greater Nazi control.
 Trade unions were abolished and workers,
employees, and employers were forced into Nazi
organizations.
 By mid-July 1933, the Nazi party
was the only political party
Permitted in Germany.
 Hitler’s will became the
foundation for government policy.
Totalitarian State

Germany became a Totalitarian State
 Totalitarianism is the total control of a country in the
government’s hands
 It subjugates individual rights.
 It demonstrates a policy of aggression.
 Communists, Socialists,
and other political
opponents of the Nazis
were among the first
to be rounded up and
imprisoned.
Totalitarian State
In a totalitarian state, the government
maintains total control through paranoia
and fear.
 The government is capable of
indiscriminate killing.
 During this time in Germany, the Nazis
passed laws which restricted the rights
of Jews: including the Nuremberg
Laws.
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Totalitarian State
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Jews, like all other
German citizens, were
required to carry
identity cards, but
their cards were
stamped with a red
“J.”
This allowed police to
easily identify them.
They were also forced
to wear a star on their
clothing
Propaganda
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"Propaganda attempts 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 wrote these words in his book Mein Kampf (1926), in
which he first advocated the use of propaganda to spread the
ideals of National Socialism
Following the 1933 Nazi party rise to power,
Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by
Joseph Goebbels.
 The Ministry's aim was to ensure that the Nazi
message was successfully communicated
through art, music, theater, films, books, radio,
educational materials, and the press.
Propaganda

One such book was the
children’s book, The
Poisonous Mushroom.
 The book portrayed
Jewish people in a
negative, “poisonous”
way.
 This was done to create
anti-Semitic views from a
young age.
Propaganda

Films in particular played an important role in
disseminating racial anti-Semitism, portraying
Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating
Aryan society.
 Newspapers in Germany printed cartoons that
used anti-Semitic caricatures to depict Jews.
 Later, as word of Nazi genocide spread to Allied
nations, the Nazis used propaganda for a very
different reason: to cover up atrocities.
 The Nazis forced concentration camp prisoners
to send postcards home, stating that they were
treated well and living in good conditions.
Nuremberg Laws: 1935
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The Nuremberg Laws
stripped Jews of their
German citizenship.
These laws did not
define a "Jew" as
someone with particular
religious beliefs, but
rather as a member of a
specific race
They were prohibited
from marrying or having
sexual relations with
persons of “German or
related blood.”

Photo: An instructional chart
distinguishes individuals based
on their “blood”
 Anyone who had three or four
Jewish grandparents was
defined as a Jew, regardless of
whether that individual
identified himself or herself as a
Jew or belonged to the Jewish
religious community.
 Many Germans who had not
practiced Judaism for years
found themselves caught in the
grip of Nazi terror. Even people
with Jewish grandparents who
had converted to Christianity
were defined as Jews.
The “Science” of Race
The Aryan Race

The Nazis divided the
world’s population into
superior and inferior
“races.”
 According to their
ideology, the “Aryan
race,” to which the
German people allegedly
belonged, stood at the top
of this racial hierarchy.
 The Nazi ideal was the
Nordic type, displaying
blond hair, blue eyes, and
tall stature.
Photo: Members of the Hitler Youth receive instruction in
“racial hygiene” at a Hitler Youth training facility.
Kristallnacht
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Kristallnacht was the “Night of Broken
Glass” on November 9-10, 1938
The Nazi regime unleashed anti-Jewish
violence across Germany and Austria;
they attacked synagogues and Jewish
homes and businesses.
Within 48 hours:
– synagogues were vandalized and
burned
– 7,500 Jewish businesses were
damaged or destroyed, and looted.
– 96 Jews were killed
– Nearly 30,000 Jewish men were
arrested and sent to concentration
camps.
– Jewish cemeteries were desecrated.
The Nazis claimed that the Jews
themselves were to blame for the
pogrom.
The Jewish community was fined and
their insurance payments (to cover the
damage) were confiscated.
Persecution
The Nazi plan for dealing with the
“Jewish Question” evolved in three
stages:
1. Expulsion: isolation from non-Jews
and pushing them out of Germany
2. Containment: Put them all together
in one place – namely ghettos and
camps
3. “Final Solution”: annihilation
Persecution/Anti-Jewish Measures
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Following the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass")
pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi leaders enforced
measures that succeeded increasingly in physically
isolating and segregating Jews from their fellow
Germans.
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.
Nazi decrees and ordinances expanded the ban on
Jews in professional life.
In January 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first
names of "non-Jewish" origin were required to add
"Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their given names.
U.S. and World Response
The Evian Conference took place in the
summer of 1938 in Evian, France.
 32 countries, including the United
States, met to discuss what to do about
the Jewish refugees who were trying to
leave Germany and Austria.
 Despite voicing feelings of sympathy,
most countries made excuses for not
accepting more refugees.
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SS St. Louis
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In May 1939 the passenger ship St.
Louis—seen here before departing
Hamburg—sailed from Germany to
Cuba carrying 937 passengers, most
of them Jews.
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Unknown to the
passengers, the
Cuban
government had
revoked their
landing
certificates.
SS St. Louis
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Since Cuba would not allow the Jewish
passengers in, the ship then sailed toward
Florida.
The US denied their request to be granted entry.
After the U.S. government denied permission for
the passengers to enter the United States, the
St. Louis returned to Europe.
Many ended up dying in concentration camps.
Ghettos
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“The ghetto was a community ravaged by hunger,
disease, and terror; a sealed-off community isolated
from the world. It was a community about whose
fate no one seemed to bother or care” –Nechama
Tec
In an attempt to further control the Jewish
population, Jews were forced to live in areas that
were designated for Jews only, called ghettos.
Ghettos were established across all of occupied
Europe, especially in areas where there was already
a large Jewish population.
Ghettos
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Many ghettos were closed by barbed
wire or walls and were guarded by SS or
local police.
 Jews sometimes had to use bridges to
go over Aryan streets that ran through
the ghetto.
Ghettos
Life in the ghettos was hard.
 Food was rationed; people often starved.
 Several families often shared a small
space
 Disease spread rapidly due to unsanitary
conditions.
 Heating, ventilation, and sanitation were
limited; severe winter weather was a big
issue.
 Many children were orphaned in the
ghettos.
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Mobile Killing Squads
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Einsatzgruppen were mobile
killing squads made up of Nazi
(SS) units and police.
They killed Jews in mass
shooting actions throughout
eastern Poland and the western
Soviet Union.
About a quarter of all Jews who
perished in the Holocaust were
shot by SS mobile killing
squads.
Wannsee Conference

On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi officials
met at a villa in Wannsee to discuss solving the
“Jewish Question”
 Reinhard Heydrich held the meeting to involve key
members of the German government; their
cooperation was needed to implement the killing
measures.
 Most of the people there were aware of the mass
murder of Jews that had already gone on.
 No one objected to the policy that Heydrich
announced.
 The meeting was not so much about deliberating
whether such a plan should be undertaken, but rather
a discussion of a decision that had already been
made.
The Final Solution
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The Final Solution was the carefully planned destruction of
European Jews: systematic mass murder.
It was outlined by Reinhard Heydrich, who detailed the plan to
establish death camps with gas chambers. This included
– Forced labor
– Extermination
– Medical experimentation
Heydrich said that about 11 million Jews were to be eventually
subjected to the Final Solution, and that:
“Under suitable supervision, the Jews shall be…taken to
the East and deployed in appropriate work…able bodied
Jews, separated by sex, will be taken to those areas in large
work details to build roads, and a large part will doubtlessly
be lost through natural attrition. The surviving
remnants…will have to be treated appropriately…”
They used euphemisms in the protocols of the meeting, but the
aim of it was clear: the coordination of a policy of genocide of
European Jews.
Deportation

Millions of people were
crammed into rail cars, taking
them from their homes and
depositing them in the camps
throughout Europe.
• Commonly between 80 and 100 people were crammed
into railcars of this type.
• Deportation trains usually carried 1,000 to 2,000
people.
• The conditions in the rail cars were horrible: too many
people, often you couldn’t sit down, no bathroom, no
food, no water.
• Many died during the extreme conditions of the
journey, and most survivors were murdered upon
arrival at the killing centers.
Concentration/Work Camps
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The Germans established detention facilities to
imprison and eliminate “enemies of the state”.
Early prisoners were Communists, Socialists,
Social Democrats, Roma Gypsies, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, homosexuals and persons accused
of socially deviant behavior.
After Germany annexed Austria in March of
1938, they began arresting and imprisoning
Jews as well.
In the camps, thousands died from exhaustion
and starvation if they were not murdered by the
Nazis
Death Camps
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Death camps were the means the Nazis used to
achieve the “final solution.”
Their purpose was one thing: mass murder.
There were six death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, and
Belzec.
Each used gas chambers to murder the Jews.
Almost all deportees who arrived at the camps
were sent immediately to the gas chambers; a
small number were chosen for special work.
Death Camps: Auschwitz
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At Auschwitz, the largest of the death camps, up to 8,000
Jews were gassed per day at the height of their killing.
Over a million were killed there by the end of the war.
The camp was made up of three parts: Auschwitz I,
Auschwitz II (Birkinau) and Auschwitz III (Buno or Monowitz).
Trains arrived daily
When they arrived, they went through “selection”
– The SS staff determined who was fit for work.
– The majority were sent immediately to the gas chambers
– They were told they were going to take a shower
– The belongings of these people were confiscated, sorted,
and sent back to Germany to be sold for profit.
In January, 1945, the Soviet forces liberated the remaining
prisoners, though 60,000 had been sent on a death march
and thousands had been killed in the camp in the days
before liberation.
Auschwitz I: The Main Camp

Construction began in May 1940 in Poland
 It was primarily a concentration camp,
although it did have a gas chamber and
crematorium
 Medical experiments were carried out in the
Hospital/Block 10; pseudoscientific research
on infants, twins, dwarfs, forced
sterilizations, castrations and hypothermia
experiments.
 Held “The Black Wall” where thousands of
executions were performed
Auschwitz II/Birkinau
 Construction
began in October
of 1941.
 Held the most prisoners
 Divided into 9 sections
 Zyklon B was first used here
 Held the four main gas chambers
with a disrobing area, chamber
and crematorium
Auschwitz III/Buno/Monowitz
Was established in nearby Monowitz
to provide forced laborers for the
Buna synthetic rubber works.
 The factory was established to take
advantage of the laborers available in
the camp and the nearby coalfields
 Prisoners selected for forced labor
were registered and tattooed with
identification numbers on their left
arm when they arrived at Auschwitz I,
and then sent to Auschwitz III.
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Gas Chambers

Many of the gas chambers used carbon
monoxide from diesel engines.
 In Auschwitz “Zyklon B” pellets were used in
the four gas chambers, which were a highly
poisonous insecticide.
 After the gassings, prisoners removed hair,
gold teeth and fillings from the Jews before
the bodies were burned in the crematoria or
buried in mass graves.
Labor Camps
 At the forced labor camps, the focus was not to just
exterminate prisoners. The focus was having them work.
 The Nazis believed that hard manual labor was not only a
means of punishing intellectual opponents, but also of
“educating” them.
 The ability to work often meant the potential to survive for
the Jews; if you couldn’t work, you would be killed.
 The labor was often pointless, humiliating and impossible
without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment or rest.
 Many people were literally worked to death.
 The Nazis also exploited the forced labor for economic
gain and to meet labor shortages in the German
workforce.
 Despite being “work” camps, people died from exposure,
lack of food, extreme working conditions, torture, and
executions.
Jewish Resistance
Despite the high risk, some individuals attempted to resist
Nazism.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
 From April-May in 1943.
 At one point, 450,000 Jews lived in 1.3 square miles, with ten foot
walls topped by barbed wire around it.
 By May of 1943, only about 60,000 were left in the ghetto.
 The uprising began due to rumors that the remaining people in
the ghetto would be deported to Treblinka extermination camp in
Poland.
 When the German forces entered the Ghetto, they were pelted
with hand grenades and street battles.
 It took 27 days for the Nazis to stop the uprising; they did this by
going from building to building and setting them on fire. The
ghetto was reduced to rubble.
 The remaining 50,000 Jews were then deported.

Jewish Resistance
At Sobibor and Treblinka, concentration
camps, prisoners stole weapons and
attacked the guards.
 Most of them were shot, though several
dozen prisoners escaped.
 At Auschwitz, four Jewish women who
were assigned to forced labor helped
Jewish crematorium workers to blow up
one of the crematoriums using explosives
smuggled into camp.
 The four women were publically hanged.
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Non-Jewish Resistance
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The “White Rose” movement protested
Nazism, though not Jewish policy, in
Germany.
The White Rose movement was founded in
June 1942 by Hans Scholl, 24-year-old
medical student, his 22-year-old sister
Sophie, and 24-year-old Christoph Probst.
The White Rose stood for purity and
innocence in the face of evil.
In February 1943, Hans and Sophie were
caught distributing leaflets and were arrested.
They were executed with Christoph 4 days
later.
Non-Jewish Resistance
In Denmark, a resistance movement
began in 1940 with activities such as
killing informers, raiding German military
facilities, and sabotaging rail lines.
 In Holland, in February 1941, the
population mounted a general strike in
protest against arrests and brutal
treatment of Jews.
 Czech agents assassinated Reinhard
Heydrich.

Rescue

Less than one percent of the non-Jewish
European population helped any Jew in some
form of rescue.
 Denmark and Bulgaria were the most
successful national resistance movements
against the Nazi’s attempt to deport their
Jews.
 Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg worked
in Hungary to protect thousands of Jews by
distributing protective Swedish (a neutral
country) passports.
Rescue
Palestine took over 50,000 German
Jews in during the 1930’s.
 Switzerland took in about 30,000, but
also turned thousands away.
 Great Britain took in thousands of
Jewish children, although they were
strict about taking in other categories of
refugees.
 A small number of American religious
groups coordinated relief activities and
helped obtain entry visas for children.

Rescue
For several weeks in October
1943, Danish rescuers
ferried 7,220 Jews to safety
across the narrow strait to
neutral Sweden.
• As a result of this national effort, more than 90 per-cent of
the Jews in Denmark escaped deportation to Nazi
concentration camps.
• The Danes proved that widespread support for Jews could
save lives.
This boat, now on display at the
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, D.C., was
used by a group of rescuers codenamed the “Helsingør Sewing
Club.”
Death Marches

In response to the deteriorating
military situation in late 1944, German
authorities ordered the evacuation of
concentration camp prisoners
 This was done in an attempt to prevent
the prisoners from falling into Allied
hands; if they fell into the Allies hands,
it would have provided further
evidence of their mass murder.
 Evacuated by train or ship, but mostly
on foot, prisoners suffered from harsh
Winter conditions,
malnutrition/starvation, exhaustion,
exposure and brutal mistreatment.
 SS guards followed strict orders to
shoot prisoners who could no longer
walk or travel.
Liberation

Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate camp
prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Maidanek in
Poland.
 British, Canadian, American, and French
troops also liberated camp prisoners.
 Troops were shocked at what they saw.
•
•
Photo: General Dwight D. Eisenhower
and other high-ranking U.S. Army
officers view the bodies of prisoners
killed by German camp authorities
during the evacuation of the Ohrdruf
concentration camp.
He publicly expressed his shock and
revulsion, and he urged others to see
the camps firsthand lest “the stories of
Nazi brutality” be forgotten or
dismissed as merely “propaganda.”
After the Camps
 Most prisoners were emaciated
to the point of being skeletal.
 Many camps had dead bodies
lying in piles.
 Many prisoners died even after
liberation.
Displaced Persons

Many of the camp prisoners had nowhere to go, so
they became “displaced persons” (DPs).
 These survivors stayed in DP camps in Germany
and Austria, which were organized and run by the
Allies and the UN
 It was expected that it would take six months of
“Relief and Rehabilitation”
 A large number of the Jewish displaced persons
were eager to leave Europe and the places their
families had been mistreated and masscred; they
became long term wards of the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the
Allied forces.
 Initially, the conditions were often very poor in the
DP camps because the army was not prepared to
help out a million people.
Displaced Persons

Relations between the DPs and the Allied
militaries were strained; they had a curfew,
limited rations, and were often housed with
non-Jews.
 President Truman and General Eisenhower
responded to how the Jewish DPs were
feeling, and put them in their own camp and
aided them in their emigration out of
Germany
 Truman issued an executive order allowing
Jewish refugees to enter the United States
without normal immigration restrictions.
DPs: Returning Home
After the camps, many survivors had
nowhere to go because their homes and
communities no longer existed; they had
been looted, taken over by others, or
destroyed in the war.
 It was often dangerous to return home;
people feared that they would reclaim
their homes and belongings. As a result,
there were anti-Jewish riots and attacks
 As a result, many stayed in the DP
camps, waiting to be allowed entry into
other countries.
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Nuremberg Trials
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The Nuremberg Trials brought some
of those responsible for the atrocities
of the war to justice.
Beginning in October 1945, 22
“major” war criminals were tried on
charges of crimes against peace, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and
conspiracy to commit such crimes.
Crimes against humanity is defined as
“murder, extermination, enslavement,
deportation…or persecutions on
political, racial or religious grounds.”
They were tried by the Allies in the
International Military Tribunal.
Most claimed that they were only
following orders, which was judged to
be an invalid defense.
12 of those convicted were sentenced
to death, 3 were acquitted, and the rest
were sentenced to prison for 10 years
to life.
Other Trials
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Twelve subsequent trials followed as well as national
trials throughout formerly occupied Europe.
 The Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings were of
Gestapo, SS members and German industrialists for
their roles in implementing the Nuremberg Laws,
mass killings by the mobile killing squads and in the
camps, deportations, forced labor, sale of Zyklon B
and medical experiments.
 The majority of trials were for lower-level officials:
camp guards, police officers, doctors, etc.
 Unfortunately, many Nazis didn’t receive severe
sentences from the courts of the countries where they
committed their crimes; they often got away with the
excuse that they were just following orders.
 Many of the Nazi criminals returned to normal lives in
German society.
Search for the Perpetrators
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After the postwar trials, there was a continued search for
perpetrators who had gotten away.
Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina and hid there until 1960
when he was captured; Israel had been searching for him
for ten years. They sentenced him to death.
Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal helped to locate Fraz
Stangle, Gustav Wagner, Franz Muerer and Karl
Silberbauer, all who were involved in the camps, ghettos,
and arrests of Jews.
Joseph Mengele, the notorious SS doctor who performed
medical experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz escaped
to Argentina, then Brazil, and then Paraguay; it wasn’t
known where he was for years. In 1985, an analysis of
human remains confirmed that he had drowned in Brazil in
1979.
The vast majority of Nazi offenders have escaped
punishment.
Response to Genocide
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Raphael Lemkin was a Jewish refugee who came up
with the term genocide; before, there had been no
term for an act involving mass murder, vandalism,
and barbarity.
Geno means race or tribe in Greek. Cide is a Latin
word meaning killing.
Lemkin presented this term to the delegates of the
UN.
In response to the Holocaust, the international
community worked to create safeguards to prevent
future genocides.
In 1948, The Declaration of Human Rights was
created by the United Nations.
They voted to establish genocide as an international
crime, calling it an “odious scourge” to be
condemned by the civilized world.
Genocide After the Holocaust
• Despite this effort, genocide has continued, and it
continues to threaten parts of the world even today.
• Cambodia- When the Khmer Rouge took control of
the Cambodian government in 1975 they began a
"re-education" doctors, teachers and students
suspected of receiving education were singled out
for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four
years 1.7-2 million were killed
• Rwanda- Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990,
exacerbating tensions between the Tutsi minority
and Hutu majority. In 1994, returning from a round of
talks, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was
killed when his plane was shot down. His death
provided the spark for an organized campaign of
violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians
across the country.
Genocides After the Holocaust
• Bosnia- Beginning in 1991, Yugoslavia began
to break up along ethnic lines. When the
republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia)
declared independence in 1992, fighting broke
out. The Serbs targeted Bosniak and Croatian
civilians in areas under their control in a
campaign of ethnic cleansing. 100,000 people
died.
• Darfur- the Government of Sudan carried out
genocide against Darfuri civilians, murdering
300,000 & displacing over 2 million people. In
addition to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, forces
under the command of Sudanese President
Omar al-Bashir have carried out attacks against
civilians