Transcript The Holocaust

The Holocaust
“The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing!” – Edmund Burke
Background to Holocaust
• For thousands of years Jews in Europe had suffered
persecution and discrimination
» Blamed by Christians for the crucifixion of Jesus
» Maintained separate and distinct cultural communities throughout
Europe
• Before Hitler came to power, the Jewish community in
Germany was well established and well integrated into
German society
» Significant contributions to German life and culture (literature, music,
art, medicine, philosophy, science, etc…)
» many thousand Jewish men fought in the WWI for the German Empire!
• Irrationally Hitler blamed the Jews for the failure of WWI
and the subsequent economic collapse of the German
economy → “The Jews are our misfortune!”
Holocaust Timeline
• 1933 – general discrimination (burning Jewish books,
advocates boycotting Jewish business
• 1935 – The Nuremberg Laws → Official Laws specifically
targeting the Jewish community
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Legally defines a Jew → one Jewish grandparent
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Jews are declared non-citizens – no legal rights
Forbids marriage of Jews and non-Jews
• 1938 – The government sanctions the destruction of Jewish
property
» Kristallnacht – “Night of the Shattered Glass” – marks the true beginning
of outright violence against Jews in Germany
» Jews are forced to where Yellow Star, their businesses and property are
confiscated
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• 1939 – Jews are forced into ghettos – most notorious was
the Warsaw ghetto, established in Poland
The “Final Solution”
• 1941 – the Final Solution begins → genocide of Jews in
Europe
» Mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps begin
» Mass murder of Jews in gas chambers
» Bodies are cremated → holocaust (Greek word: Holos (whole)
Kaustos (burnt)
• As the German army advance through Europe, the
Einsatzgruppen (elite SS death squads) would identify
and execute Jews, communists and homosexuals
• In total, over 6 million Jews were murdered and over 10
million people died in Nazi death camps!
Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing
units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod Ukraine.
Selection of Jews at the ramp in Auschwitz-II
(Birkenau), May/June 1944.
Anti-Semitism in Canada
• Canada also displayed racist & anti-Semetic
attitudes at the official level
– In 1939 the Canadian government sends Jewish refugees on board
the St. Louis back to Germany to certain death
– In 1945, a senior official, when asked how many Jews Canada
would bring in after the war, responded “none is too many”
The "St. Louis," carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi
Germany
Japanese Internment
• Japanese and Chinese Canadians
have a presence in Canada going
back well before 1900
• Asians have suffered a long
history of prejudice and
discrimination
• 1907 – race riots in Vancouver
targeted Japanese and Chinese
Canadians
• Japanese & Chinese Canadians
were denied the right to vote or
join armed forces
Japanese Internment
• Japan became an enemy of
Canada after the attack on Pearl
Harbor 1941
• 22,000 Japanese Canadians living
in B.C., 14,000 born here
• War Measures Act permitted the
Canadian government to seize
the property of Japanese
Canadians, remove them from
their homes and relocate them
into “internment Camps”
• All their property was auctioned
off to pay for the cost of their
“internment”!
Does this sound familiar?
• Japanese Canadians were…
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Photographed and fingerprinted
Issued identification numbers
Required to carry their identification cards at all times
Sent to interment camps where they were forced to do labour
All resisters were sent to a “concentration camp” in Ontario where
they were forced to wear “uniforms” bearing a large red circle –
the emblem of Japan
• Could not legally refuse to obey these regulations
• During war years not one Japanese Canadian was
ever charged with treason or sabotage!
Japanese Interment
Dr. David Suzuki – Former interment
camp inmate
Genocide Post WWII
• After WWII the world community vowed it
would never again tolerate such a hateful
treatment of humanity
• Since WWII attempted genocides have
occurred in:
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Cambodia
Kosovo
Rwanda
Darfur