Transcript The Diversity of Nazi Victims

Extensive Camp System
 Over 18 million people passed through the Nazi camps
 Handicapped, Gypsies, Homosexuals and about 20
other groups of people
 These people were considered a “threat to the
economic security and the purity of the German race”
 They viewed disease as good
- it got rid of the weak and controlled human breeding
Weimar Republic
 The Weimar republic was the government in Germany
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between the end of WWI and Nazi Germany.
During the Weimar Republic – Scientists developed a
hierarchy of race
Killing of “unworthy people” was discussed before the
Nazis in the Weimar days
Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt – “AngloSaxons are the superior race”
Phrenology- studying someone’s skull to identify their
moral character and intellectual potential
The Handicapped
 1933 – Handicapped Sterilized
 Handicapped – blind, deaf, loss of limbs, alcoholism,
schizophrenia, etc….
 1935 – To get married, you needed a health certificate
The Handicapped
Buchenwald PR Poster - 1938
The T4 Program
Adult Euthanasia Program
 The people that didn’t fit were called “useless eaters”
 The Nazis went to all the hospitals and made lists of
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everyone who had illnesses
The SS arrived at the hospitals dressed in white,
posing as doctors
They then brought everyone to the gas chambers
Parents were sent home a letter of lies and ashes
August 14th 1941 – program ended b/c of pressure from
the Catholic church
Handicapped were still persecuted in the camps
The Gypsies
 Gypsies originally came India; migrated west to
Europe; historical target of discrimination; labeled as
liars, thieves, criminal, and even cannibals
 Divided into two major groups: Roma are those who
have lived in Eastern Europe; Sinti are West European
Gypsies
 Gypsies target of prejudice in pre-Nazi Germany; laws
designed to control and restrict their activities
 When Hitler came to power he borrowed and applied
laws that already existed and then expanded antiGypsy persecution
The Gypsies
 Nazi leaders had conflicting ideas on the treatment of Gypsies
 Nazi racial scientists divided Gypsies into pure blood Gypsies
and mixed blood or those who had intermingled with other non
Aryan groups
 In 1935, Gypsies rounded up and placed into special Gypsy camps
-conditions in camps depended upon location and person in
command
 In 1936, Reich Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsy
Nuisance was created
 September 1939- Conference held in Berlin; called by Reinhard
Heydrich; may have decided on a Final Solution to the Gypsy
problem
Marzahn Gypsy Internment
Camp1935
Gypsy children at Rivesaltes,
France camp
The Gypsies
 December 1942- all Gypsies left in the Reich ordered to
Auschwitz; Auschwitz contained largest population of
Gypsies; had a separate Gypsy camp which lasted for 17
months; in August 1944, last of the Gypsies in the
camp were gassed
 Gypsies subject to all types of experiments by Nazi
doctors
 In most other parts of Europe Gypsies turned over to
the Germans and killed
Asocial
 Someone that is labeled asocial is someone who does
not “conform to the norm”
 People considered asocial were persecuted
 Who would this apply to?
Asocial
Black Triangle Women
Lesbians, unmarried mothers, prostitutes,
women who had abortions
Jehovah's Witnesses
 Persecuted on religious grounds; had chance to escape
persecution by renouncing their religious beliefs; most
refused to do so
 Nazis disliked Witnesses for many reasons
- Witnesses taught that forces of Jehovah would defeat
the forces of Satan as personified in the Nazis
- Witnesses refused to pledge allegiance to German
state or serve in the army
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
 1933- Declaration of Facts a Witness work designed to
inform the Nazi government of their neutrality
 1935- Nazis pass laws barring Witnesses from civil
service jobs, lost government benefits, children barred
from schools, etc.,
 Witnesses sent to concentration camps; maintained
their religious beliefs; continued their attack on the
Nazi state; subject to punishment and torture
 Considered model prisoners; accepted order and
authority; part of a divine plan; sustained in camps by
family and faith
Homosexuals
 Homosexual behavior had been outlawed in Germany
since 1871
 Hitler and Himmler considered homosexuality a
predisposition which could not be changed
 Believed that only a few homosexuals could be
“rehabilitated
 It was believed that a final solution was as inevitable
for them as it was for the Jews
Homosexuals
 Himmler the most homophobic of all Nazi leaders;
explained the reasons for the extermination of male
homosexuals in terms of population and race
 In December 1934- law changed so that homosexual
intent was now grounds to arrest someone
 Homosexuals sent to camps; forced to wear Pink
Triangles; among the most hated, despised, punished
and isolated group of prisoners
 Homosexuals used heavily for experiments; attempts
were made to “rehabilitate” or “straighten them out”
Homosexuals
Gay Holocaust Victims
The Poles
 Hitler hated Poles for both racial and political reasons;
invasion of Poland led to massive slaughter
 Hitler saw Poland as a source of slave labor and a
location for concentration camps
 Germans aimed at destroying Polish people and
culture at the same time
 Nazis strictly subjugated Poles, starved them; Nazis
aimed to depopulate Poland and make room for
German settlers
The Poles
 Poles executed almost daily in parts of Poland; other
sent to camps were they were worked to death, starved,
or gassed
 Many Poles and historians believe that if war had
continued, Poles would have been obliterated by the
Germans
Poles
During the Holocaust, Poland lost:
 45% of her doctors,
 57% of her attorneys
 40% of her professors,
 30% of her technicians,
 more than 18% of her clergy
 most of her journalists
Rhineland Bastards
 Small group of children; had German mothers; fathers
were black French soldiers from Morocco who had
occupied Germany after World War I
 Nazi government registered children; 385 of them;
children examined to prove their “racial inferiority”
 They were all sterilized
Rhineland Bastards
French Soldier Occupying Germany
During World War I
He is cooking dinner
in a German Helmet
Propaganda illustration from a Nazi film strip. The caption
states, in German: "The Jew is a bastard." The illustration links
Jews with others the Nazis deemed inferior--eastern peoples,
blacks, Mongols, and east Africans.
German Poster Used in Italy
Russian POW’s
 After the Jews, Russian POWS numerically the largest
number of victims
 Approximately 5.7 million Red Army soldiers taken
prisoner during the war; over half perished
 Died in camps or in transport; died from hunger, lack
of shelter; thousands shot; brutally treated by German
military
 Ordeal of Soviet prisoners did not end with the war;
rejected by Soviet community after the war; many sent
to the Gulag by Stalin