Transcript Q - TeacherWeb

Holocaust
– refers to a specific genocidal event in twentiethcentury history: the state-sponsored, systematic
persecution and annihilation of European Jewry
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.
– Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political
dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and
death under Nazi tyranny.
Kristallnacht Progrom
• In the first half of 1938, numerous laws were
passed restricting Jewish economic activity
and occupational opportunities.
• Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal or Night of
Broken Glass) took place on Nov 9 & 10, 1938
• Approximately 1,400 synagogues were burned
and 7,000 stores owned by Jews and hundreds
of homes were damaged and looted,
thousands of Jewish males were arrested
Germans
pass
broken
window of
Jewishowned
shop
Synagogue on
fire during the
Kristallnacht
Progrom
Synagogue
on fire
during the
Kristallnacht
Progrom
Synagogue on fire during the Kristallnacht
Progrom
Anti-Semitism
• Early Christian thought held Jews collectively responsible
for the crucifixion of Jesus. This religious teaching became
embedded in both Catholic and Protestant theology during
the first millennium, with terrible consequences for Jews.
• Term coined in 1879 in Germany, in an attempt to define
anti-Jewish sentiment on a scientific basis
• Was used to justify the rejection of Jews as a different
people, nation, and later race, that threatens the existence
of the national unity and the national state.
• Became a political basis for the Nazi Party
• All of these centuries of hatred were exploited by the Nazis
and their allies during World War II, culminating in the
Holocaust, the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.
– Hitler’s goal was to create an “Aryan” race or a pure race
• The Nazi party used propaganda to spread Anti-Semitism
feeling amongst Germans
Nazi Propaganda
• Propaganda is the distribution of information to influence or control
large groups of people.
• In totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany, propaganda plays a
significant role in consolidating power in the hands of the
controlling party.
• Shortly after rising to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler created the Reich
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP)
• Nearly all aspects of German culture were subject to the
Propaganda Ministry's control, including films, theater, music, the
press, and radio broadcasts.
• The principles of Nazism, including the antisemitism feelings were
incorporated into nearly every newspaper, radio broadcast, and film
produced in the Third Reich. These carefully-crafted messages were
designed to mobilize the German population to support all Nazi
military and social efforts, including the deportation of Jews and
others to concentration camps.
• “Aryan” Race
• Was believed to be the
master race or “pure”
race
• Hitler believed the
Jews and others were
corrupting the
German blood line
• Commonly shown as
having blue eyes and
blonde hair
Taken from the children’s book, The
Poisonous Mushroom, the caption in
this picture reads: “Here my little
one, you get something very sweet,
but as a reward you both must come
with me.”
This caricature portrays an elderly
Jew trying to tempt small children
with candy. It relies on one of the
basic fears of all parents and the
common instruction to little children
not to take candy from a stranger.
There are links made between “a
stranger,” “danger,” “poison,” and “a
Jew.” The Jew is portrayed as a dark,
evil, threatening, manipulative
stranger, as opposed to the innocent,
pure, naïve Aryan children.
This is the cover of the children’s
book by Ernest Hiemer "Just as
it is often hard to tell a
toadstool from an edible
mushroom, so too it is often
very hard to recognize the Jew
as a swindler and criminal..."
The Jew cries:
"We don't care
about Germany...
The main thing is
that things go well
for us..."
Money Is The G-d
Of The Jews:
"The G-d of the Jews is
money. To earn money, he
commits the Greatest crimes.
He will not rest until he can sit
on a huge money sack, until
he has become the king of
money.
"Daddy, someday
when I have my own
farm, no Jew will enter
my house..."
How to Tell a Jew:
"The Jewish nose
is bent. It looks
like the number
six..."
The number 6 is
connected to Satan and
this explanation of the
“Jewish nose” gives it’s
a devilish meaning.
Teaching like this
became common within
German schools
Without Solving the
Jewish Question No
Salvation for Mankind:
"He who fights the Jews
battles the Devil.“
~ Julius Streicher
Left- “Adolf Hitler is victory!”
Right- Toy soldiers
Weimar Republic and the Rise of the
Nazi Party
• Weimar Republic was the gov that was
established at the conclusion of WWI
• This gov. was forced upon the German people
• Due to the instability within Germany many
people rejected the Weimar Republic
• Hitler took advantage of this instability and
appealed the citizens of Germany
– Inflation, Unemployment, Global Depression
• Jan 1933, Hitler was appointed the chancellor
of Germany
Anti-Jewish Policy by year
• 1933-34
• All non-l'Aryans'' were dismissed from holding government jobs.
This regulation applied to public school teachers, university
professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
• A general boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses was proclaimed.
Officially it lasted for one day, but actually it continued for much
longer in many localities.
• This meant that Jews could not hold jobs in radio, in the theaters,
or sell paintings or sculptures.
• Mass bonfires were ignited throughout Germany. Books written by
Jews and anti-Nazis were burned.
• Jews were prohibited from owning land.
• Jewish lawyers and judges were barred from their professions.
• Jewish doctors were barred from treating "Aryan" patients.
• Jews were prohibited from producing kosher meat.
Anti-Jewish Policy by year
• 1935
• The Reichsrag adopted the Nuremberg Laws, which declared that
Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany.
• Marriage and intimate relations between Jews and those of "Aryan"
blood were declared criminal acts.
• German females under the age of 45 were prohibited from being
employed by Jews.
• 1936
• Hitler temporarily relaxed the antisemitic propaganda and other
measures against Jews in order to avoid criticism by foreign visitors
arrending the summer Olympic Games in Berlin.
• 1937
• "Aryanization, " the confiscation ofJewish businesses and property,
intensified greatly.
Anti-Jewish Policy by year
• 1938
• The Reich Supreme Court declared that being a Jew was cause for
dismissal from a job.
• The Nuremberg Laws were extended to Austria after, the annexation of
Austria.
• All Jews had to add the names "Israel" and "Sarah" to their identification
papers, and passports were marked with the red letter J, for Jude (Jew).
• Jews could no longer attend plays and concerts, own phones, or have
drivers' licenses, car registrations, etc.
• Kristallnacht Pogrom (Night of Broken Glass): approximately 1,400
synagogues were burned and 7,000 stores owned by Jews and hundreds
of homes were damaged and looted.
• 30,000 Jews, most of them leaders in the Jewish communities, were sent
to concentration camps. Many were offered the opportunity to leave the
camps provided they could prove they had arranged their emigration from
Germany.
• Very few Jewish children remained in German schools
• All Jewish shops were ordered to close by December 31, 1938.
• Jews had to abide by curfews.
The Ghettos
• ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in which the Germans
concentrated Jewish population and forced them to live under
miserable conditions.
• Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the
non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
• The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in Germanoccupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone.
• The Germans regarded the establishment of ghettos as only
temporary. In many places ghettoization lasted a relatively short
time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months
or years.
• 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 Nazis 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.
A sign, in both German and Latvian, warning that people attempting to
cross the fence or to contact inhabitants of the Riga ghetto will be shot.
Riga, Latvia, 1941-1943.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum
An emaciated child eats in the
streets of the Warsaw ghetto.
Warsaw, Poland, between
1940 and 1943.
— US Holocaust Memorial
Museum
Jewish children forced to haul a wagon. Lodz
ghetto, Poland, wartime.
Life in the Ghettos• Watch:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php
?ModuleId=10005059&MediaId=1180
– Starvation within in the Ghetto
• Watch:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php
?ModuleId=10005059&MediaId=1219
– Working in the Ghetto
“Final Solution”
• The Nazis frequently used indirect 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.
• It is not known when the leaders of Nazi Germany
definitively decided to implement the "Final Solution."
The genocide, or mass destruction, of the Jews was the
culmination of a decade of increasingly severe
discriminatory measures.
• The genocide of the Jews was the culmination of a
decade of German policy under Nazi rule and the
realization of a core goal of the Nazi dictator, Adolf
Hitler.
Concentration Camps & Killing Centers
• Concentration Camps
– served primarily as detention and labor centers, as
well as sites for the murder of smaller, targeted
groups of individuals.
• Killing Centers
– essentially "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.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland
A women and children deemed unfit for work on their way to gas
chamber #4
Crematoria at Majdanek
Slave Labor at Buchenwald
Horrors of the Holocaust Exposed
Entrance to Auschwitz
The Perpetrators
• Hundreds of thousands of people were involved, either
directly or indirectly, in implementing the Final
Solution.
• The core organizers, planners and perpetrators of the
annihilation of European Jewry came from the SS who
passionately believed in the Nazi ideology – they were
the backbone of the extermination camps and the
mobile killing units personnel.
• Ordinary people from other nations also took part in
the killing, whether as private individuals or as
collaborators with the Nazi apparatus. Some people
enlisted in the Waffen SS for active service owing to
their belief in the Nazi ideology.
• Others acted out of opportunistic, monetary and
career motives.
Perpetrator- Franz Stangl (Background)
• Born in Austria in 1908, Franz Stangl joined the Austrian police in 1931 and
became a criminal investigations officer in the political division.
• In March 1942, Stangl became commandant of the Sobibor extermination
camp in Poland. Later that year he became commandant of Treblinka
where he was responsible for the deaths of 870,000 Jews. He also spent
time at the San Sabba concentration camp.
• After the war Stangl returned to Austria, where he was arrested by the
Americans for being an SS member (they did not know that he had
participated in the extermination of Jews).
• Stangl was found out when the Americans began investigating the
Euthanasia Program. About to be charged in May 1948, Stangl escaped to
Rome, Syria, and eventually Brazil where he and his family lived under
their own names until discovered in 1967.
• Stangl was tried in Germany and sentenced to life in prison, where he died
in 1971.
• While in prison Stangl was interviewed by Gitta Sereny, a British journalist.
The interviews were published in a book entitled Into That Darkness. The
following is an excerpt from one of their discussions in prison.
Interview- Part 1
• Q Would it be true to say that you finally felt they weren’t really
human beings?
• A: When I was on a trip once, years later in Brazil… my train
stopped next to a slaughterhouse. The cattle in the pens, hearing
the noise of the train, trotted up to the fence and stared at the
train. They were very close to my window, one crowding the other,
looking at me through the fence. I thought then, “look at this; this
reminds me of Poland; that’s just how the people looked, trustingly,
just before they were put in tins.”
• Q: You said “tins.” What do you mean?
• A: …I couldn’t eat tinned meat after that. Those big eyes… which
looked at me… not knowing that in no time at all they’d all be
dead…
• Q: So you didn’t feel they were human beings?
• A: Cargo. They were cargo.
Interview- Part 2
• Q: When do you think you began to think of them as cargo?
• A: I think it started the day I first saw Totenlager [the sub-camp where the
gas chambers stood] in Treblinka. I remember Wirth [first commander of
the camp] standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had
nothing to do with humanity; it couldn’t have; it was a mass—a mass of
rotting flesh. Wirth said, “What shall we do with this garbage?” I think
unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.
• Q: There were so many children, did they ever make you think of your
children, of how you would feel in the position of those parents?
• A: No… I can’t say I ever thought that way… you see, I rarely saw them as
individuals. It was always a huge mass. I sometimes stood on the wall and
saw them in the tube [the passage leading to the gas chamber area].
But—how can I explain it—they were naked, packed together, running,
being driven with whips like…
• Q: Could you not have changed that?… In your position, could you not
have stopped the nakedness, the whips, the horror of the cattle pens?
• A: No, no, no. This was the system. Wirth had invented it. It worked. And
because it worked, it was irreversible.
Liberation
• As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi
Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration
camp prisoners. Many of these prisoners had survived forced marches into
the interior of Germany from camps in occupied Poland. These prisoners
were suffering from starvation and disease.
• Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing
the camp. Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn
bodies of murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation the gas
chambers were left standing
• 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.
Liberation
• Watch:
– http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?Mo
duleId=10005131&MediaId=198
– Hanover, Germany
• Watch:
– http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?Mo
duleId=10005131&MediaId=213
– Mauthausen, Austria
Watch liberation of Auschwitz:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?ModuleId=10005131&MediaId=174
Hairbrushes of victims, found soon after the liberation of Auschwitz. Poland, after January
27, 1945.