Transcript Holocaust

US History, May 20
• Entry Task: What is a question that you have
about the HOLOCAUST? Write it down on the
notecard.
• Announcements:
– Did you turn in your writing prompt about D-Day?
– Did you turn in your “article” about The Battle of
the Bulge?
To recognize
the in
independence
&
Yalta
Conference
February 1945
sovereignty of nations in Eastern Europe
• The “Big 3” met at Yalta from February 4-11,
1945 to discuss post-war Europe given the
eminent defeat of Germany:
– Stalin refused to give up Eastern Europe but he did
agree to free elections and “self-determination”
– Stalin agreed to send Soviet troops to the Pacific after
the German surrender if the USSR could keep
Manchuria
Soon after the Yalta Conference in Feb 1945,
FDR died…and Harry Truman became president
April 25, 1945 – Elbe Day (1st
contact)
Mussolini &
His Mistress,
Claretta
Petacci
Are Hung in
Milan, 1945
• April 30, 1945 - Hitler married
Eva Braun and they swallowed
cyanide and Hitler shot himself
with a pistol.
The bodies of Hitler
and Eva Braun were
cremated in the
chancellery garden
by the bunker
survivors (as per Der
Fuhrer's orders) and
reportedly later
recovered in part by
Russian troops.
In late April 1945, the Allies broke through
the Eastern & Western Fronts forcing both
Italy & Germany to surrender
Dick Winters and Easy Company at Hitler’s
residence, the Eagle’s Nest
• Allied soldiers
mock Hitler atop
his balcony at the
Reich Chancellery
Germany and Eastern Europe –
Mass rape (mostly) by Soviets
• Possibly up to 2 million women; in many cases victims of
repeated rapes
• Stalin reportedly stated that he should "understand it if a
soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through
blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some
trifle." (about rape in Yugoslavia)
• Stalin also reportedly said: "We lecture our soldiers too much;
let them have their initiative.“ (after hearing about treatment
of German people)
WW2 Timeline
(Allies, Axis, USSR)
Holocaust (hol·o·caust): n 1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life,
especially by fire
2. Greek word that means burnt whole or consumed by fire
The Holocaust
• The Nazis killed over
6 million Jews during
World War II, which
became known as the
Holocaust. Made up
2/3 of Europe’s Jews
• The Nazis also killed
approximately 6
million Poles, Slavs,
Gypsies, and other
groups as well during
the Holocaust.
September 11, 2001
2,999 People died on September 11th
Just to compare: 3,000x365 – 5 years =
Jewish Holocaust deaths
Liberation of the Camps
• Allied troops entered Nazi-occupied territories
and stumbled upon concentration and death
camps – 1st was Majdanek in Poland – then
Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka killing centers
• Auschwitz was liberated in Aug 1945
• US forces liberated the Buchenwald camp, DoraMittelbau, Flossenburg, Dachau, and
Mauthausen; British and Canadians in the North
• General Eisenhower insisted on photographing
and documenting the horror for future
generations to learn from and not repeat.
• Eisenhower also forced villagers neighboring the
death camps to view what had occurred in their
own backyards.
1944-45: Liberation of the Camps
• Soon after
liberation, a
Soviet physician
examines
Auschwitz camp
survivors.
Poland,
February 18,
1945.
Mistreated, starved prisoners in the Ebensee
concentration camp, Austria.
• Emaciated survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp soon
after the liberation of the camp. Germany, after April 11, 1945.
Warning: Disturbing Images
(next)
SS officer
Eichelsdoerfer, the
commandant of the
Kaufering IV
concentration camp,
stands among the
corpses of prisoners
killed in his camp.
Piles of corpses, soon after the
liberation of the Mauthausen camp.
Austria, after May 5, 1945
Mauthausen survivors cheer the soldiers of the Eleventh
Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army one day after
their actual liberation.
As we entered the camp, the living
skeletons still able to walk crowded
around us and, though we wanted to
drive farther into the place, the milling,
pressing crowd would not let us. It is
not an exaggeration to say that almost
every inmate was insane with hunger.
Just the sight of an American brought
cheers, groans and shrieks. People
crowded around to touch an American,
to touch the jeep, to kiss our arms-perhaps just to make sure that it was
true. The people who couldn't walk
crawled out toward our jeep. Those who
couldn't even crawl propped
themselves up on an elbow, and
somehow, through all their pain and
suffering, revealed through their eyes
the gratitude, the joy they felt at the
arrival of Americans.
--Captain J.D. Pletcher, 71st Division
Headquarters
Liberation at Auschwitz I
• The same day, I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town
of Gotha. I have never been able to describe my emotional
reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable
evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred
of decency. Up to that time I had known about it only generally
or through secondary sources. I am certain however, that I have
never at any time experienced an equal sense of shock.
I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my
duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about
these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or
assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just
propaganda". Some members of the visiting party were unable to
go through with the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I
returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent
communications to both Washington and London, urging the two
governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of
newspaper editors and representative groups from the national
legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately
placed before the American and the British publics in a fashion
that would leave no room for cynical doubt.
Eisenhower
Warning: Disturbing Images
(next slide)
German citizens forced by the US Army
to visit Buchenwald – April 15-16, 1945
No precautions were taken to protect them from
the typhus epidemic
A German girl is overcome as she walks past the exhumed
bodies of some of the 800 slave workers murdered by the SS
guards near Namering, Germany, and laid here so that
townspeople may view the work of their Nazi leaders.
The practice of bringing German civilians from nearby towns to the
concentration camps after they were liberated was started by General Walton
Walker who ordered the Mayor of the town of Ohrdruf (sub camp of
Buchenwald) and his wife to visit the Ohrdruf labor camp after it was
discovered by American troops on April 4, 1945. After their visit, the Mayor and
his wife returned home and killed themselves.
"Was können wir tun?" (What could we have done?) According to the Official Report,
this statement would seem to represent the most popular attitude in the town of
Dachau.
Anti-Semitism
• Jews accounted for less than 1%
of the German population when
Hitler took over.
• During the Weimar Republic
before Hitler took power, of the
230 cabinet positions in Berlin,
only 7 were held by Jews.
Yet Jews were thought to possess all the
power and wealth in Germany after WWI.
Definition of Jewish:
• 1935 – Anyone with 3
Jewish grandparents,
someone with 2 Jewish
grandparents who
belonged to Jewish
community, was married to
a Jew or Jewess, was the
offspring of a marriage or
extramarital liaison with a
Jew
How did the Nazis know who was
Jewish?
• Census in 1933 had “race” as a category.
• Their clothes, habits, and practices made them look
different.
• Synagogues and temples kept birth, marriage, and
death records.
• Neighbors and friends turned on them after the
Nazis took over, so they could claim rewards.
• I.D. cards labeled Jews with a “J” after the
Nuremberg laws went into effect.
• Jews were later required to sew yellow Stars of David
to all outer clothing, so they could be easily
identified on sight.
Also considered Untermenschen (subhuman):
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Roma/Gypsies
Communists
Physically and mentally handicapped/Disabled
Terminally ill
Homosexuals
Poles, Slavs, and Serbs
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Political prisoners and political opponents
Resistance fighters
Blacks
Habitual criminals
Propaganda Examples
• Der Sturmer (The Attacker): published by Julius
Streicher
• Political cartoons
• Posters on kiosks
• Exaggerated and distorted facts
• “The Eternal Jew” (Der Ewige Jude)- book with 256
pictures depicting Jews published in 1937
• "The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea
so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can
never escape from it." Joseph Goebbels
• "Propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If the means
achieves the end then the means is good.........the new Ministry has no
other aim than to unite the nation behind the ideal of the national
revolution." Joseph Goebbels
Der Giftpliz (The Poisonous
Mushroom)
• Aimed at kids
• Used in schools
• Cartoons / drawings with
captions such as:
• How To Tell A Jew
• How Jewish Traders
Cheat
• How Jews Torment
Animals
• Money Is The God of All
Jews
Pre-war German
Propaganda
Anti-Jewish propaganda book
"The Poisonous Mushroom”
Germany, c. 1938.
Anti-Jewish
propaganda
book "Trust
No Fox."
Germany,
ca. 1938.
Propaganda slide entitled "The Jew a Bastard,"
illustrating different racial types, and
characterizing Jews as a "bastard" race.
"The Jew: The inciter of war, the
prolonger of war." It is from 1943 or
1944,
Propaganda slide entitled "In
commercial trades there are 106,699
Jews; In heavy, physical work, only
12,500 Jews."
Propaganda slide entitled "The Jews
have always been Race Defilers."
Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between
an "Aryan" and a black woman. The caption
states: "The result! A loss of racial pride."
Cover from the program to the
antisemitic Nazi exhibition entitled,
The Eternal Jew.
Sign used during the anti-Jewish boycott: "Help liberate Germany
from Jewish capital. Don't buy in Jewish stores." Germany, 1933
History of Anti-Semitism
• Holocaust brought together strands of anti-semitism
• Jews have faced discrimination throughout world history.
• Jews were often blamed for what was wrong and were accused of being
too smart or too rich or owning too much land.
• In ancient Egypt Jews were enslaved.
• In the Roman Empire, they were banned from citizenship.
• They’ve often been labeled “Christ killers”.
• In the Middle Ages, they were forced to live in walled ghettos to keep
them from competing with Christian businesses and influencing Christian
children.
• In 1348 they were accused of causing the Black Death by poisoning wells.
• In the 15th century they were tortured during the Spanish Inquisition.
• In Russia in 1881, pogroms were organized that killed thousands of Jews.
• In 1879 German Wilhelm Marr taught that Germans belonged to a
superior/master race while Jews, by nature, were a slave race. He founded
the League of Anti-Semitism.
• The Final Solution: Hitler’s plan to murder all Jews of Europe that began
• June 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Life in Europe before the Holocaust
• Jews lived in every country of Europe
• 9 million in 21 countries (by the end of the war 2
out of every 3 of these Jews were dead)
• Poland- largest Jewish population
• Small towns- shtetls
• Yiddish language, culture, theater, movies, etc
• Jews in all walks of life (farmers, tailors, doctors,
teachers, etc.)
• 1933-35: National Economic Boycott – no
Jews in medical or legal profession, teachers
and civil workers fired, no business licenses
Further Actions
• 1933: Jews are excluded from all artistic,
dramatic, literary, and film enterprises.
• Sept. 29, 1933, Jewish farmers lose their land
and Jews lose the right to leave their families
property upon their deaths.
• 37,000 Jews leave the country to live
elsewhere.
Nuremburg Laws: 1935-38
-Jews lost citizenship
-no intermarriage
-segregation
-no telephones in home
-curfew of 8 pm
-Jews over 6 yrs old had to wear
star of David
BADGES OF HATE!
1936 Olympics
courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
German citizens salute Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics
in Berlin
Kristallnacht
“Night Of Broken Glass”
Photo credits: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Kristallnacht
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November 9, 1938
Night of the Broken Glass
Synagogues burned
SS broke into businesses, homes, beat up
occupants
• 91 Jews killed
• 26,000 thrown in Concentration camps
Jewish Refugees
• France – 40,000
• Great Britain – 80,000
• British-controlled Palestine (later Israel):
30,000
• US – 100,000
SS ST. LOUIS
(1939) – was
refused entrance to
the US – 740/943
passengers had
immigration papers
Evian
Conference
•Summer of 1938:
Called by
President
Roosevelt
•32 countries, 9
days
• 1924 immigration quotas not lifted- depression
• All countries agreed the situation of the Jews trying to
escape was desperate BUT none of them opened their
doors to let Jews escape Hitler’s grip.
• Germany responded by saying others countries
criticized them but were unwilling to take the refugees.
Americans Reaction (or lack of)
• 1939 (Feb-June) – Wagner-Rogers Bill would have
admitted 20,000 German refugee children to the US
(bill dies in committee)
• Sept 1942 – Bill to open the doors to refugees in
France (dies in committee)
• Dec 1942 – Jewish leaders meet with FDR and hand
him a 20-page summary of the Holocaust
• April 1943 – Bermuda Conference (possibility of
rescuing European Jewish refugees)
• Jan 1944 – FDR establishes the War Refugee Board
T-4 Euthanasia Program: Fall 1939
• Guiding Principles: Racial hygiene and racial
purity
• Killing or forced sterilization of “inferior races”,
Jews, Gypsies, mentally defective,
handicapped, insane, incurably sick people
• Between December 1939 and August 1941,
about 50,000 to 60,000 children and adults
secretly killed by lethal injections or in gassing
installations.
• Euthanasia program was a valuable precursor
to the “Final Solution” later implemented by
the Nazis
This image shows patients in an unidentified asylum. Their
existence is described as "life without hope." The Nazis
sought, through propaganda, to develop public sympathy for
the Euthanasia Program.
The Ghettos
• Transition areas or collection areas used for
deportation to death camps and
concentration camps.
• 5 Major Ghettos: Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow,
Lublin, Lvov
• 356 Ghettos established by Nazis in Poland,
Soviet Union, Baltic States, Czechoslovakia,
Romania and Hungary between 1939-1945.
• Small town ghettos not sealed off
• Larger city ghettos sealed of with brick or
stone walls, wooden fences, barbed wire.
Warsaw Ghetto
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400,000 Jews in a 3.5 square mile area of
Warsaw which normally housed 160,000
Sealed off by a 10 foot high wall on November 15, 1940
Survival on a bowl of soup a day
300-400 persons died each day from starvation or
disease
• By July of 1942 about 80,000 Jews perished
• Jewish Council (Judenrat) established
• Resisted 28 days before troops burned down ghetto
building by building- End May 16, 1943
Jews Deported during/after
uprising
Family being forced into Ghettos
Why didn’t they resist more?
• Hope is powerful
• Deception by the Nazis (postcards sent home,
flowers at the train depots, etc.)
• They didn’t know who the enemy was
• In denial because they’d experienced antiSemitism as a people throughout history
• Collective responsibility
• Few weapons (Weimar laws prevented citizens
from being armed due to losing WWI)
• Dehumanization
Wannsee Conference in Berlin
• Jan. 20, 1942
• Final Solution planned here – “treated
accordingly” meant extermination
• Plan: 20 countries – 11 million Jews
killed
• Adolph Eichmann was in charge of the
logistics for mass deportation
• Heinrich Himmler was a main architect
Entrance to Auschwitz
“Work Will set you free”
Types of Camps
• Death Camps (Killing Centers): Part of
Hitler’s Final solution: Sole purpose was
to kill all Jews, gas chambers or burned
to death: 3.5 million Jews murdered
• Concentration Camps
• Transit Camps
• Slave labor Camps
• Jews were forced to work in labor camps in order to help the
Nazis.
• Those too old, young, sick, crippled, and the mentally
retarded were immediately sent to concentration camps where
they were put to death.
Jewish
women at
forced labor
pulling
hopper cars
of quarried
stones in the
Plaszlow
concentration
camp, 1944.
Prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp
building the Weimar-Buchenwald railroad line.
Prisoners from Buchenwald awaiting execution in the
forest near the camp.
Auschwitz
• Death and Work
Camp Combined
• 12,000 killed
daily
• 2.5 million Jews
and gypsies died
here
• Southern Poland
• Largest Camp
Even the very young…
Bones of anti-Nazi German women are visible in the
crematoria in the concentration camp at Weimar,
Germany. April 14, 1945.
eyeglasses
Shoes
A crate full of rings confiscated from prisoners
in Buchenwald and found by American troops
in a cave adjoining Buchenwald.
Nuremburg Trials
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1945 Nuremberg, Germany
22 Nazi officials
Some claimed to just be following orders
Trials lasted 11 months
11 sentenced to death, 3 acquitted, rest
received prison terms
War Crimes Trials
· In 1945 and 1946, as a result of the Nuremberg Trials, 12
Nazi leaders were sentenced to death for their war crimes.
1. Participation in a
common plan or
conspiracy for the
accomplishment of
a crime against
peace
2. Planning,
initiating and waging
wars of aggression
and other crimes
against peace
3. War crimes
4. Crimes against
humanity
Goering, Hess, von
Ribbentrop,
and Keitel in front
row
In total, 5,025 Nazi criminals were convicted between
1945-1949 in the American, British and French zones, in
addition to an unspecified number of people who were tried
in the Soviet zone.
In all, 80,000 Germans were convicted for committing
crimes against humanity – Simon Wiesenthal’s efforts led
to the capture of over 1,000 Nazi criminals.
Eichmann oversaw the
deportation and annihilation
of Europe’s Jews.
In 1960, Adolf Eichmann
was captured
in Argentina by
the Mossad, Israel's
intelligence service.
Following a widely
publicised trial in Israel, he
was found guilty of war
crimes and hanged in
1962.
Eva Kor
Josef Mengele
eluded
capture. He
drowned while
swimming off
the Brazilian
coast in 1979
and was
buried under a
false name.
· Thousands of other Nazis were found guilty of war crimes
and were imprisoned, and in some cases, executed.
A war crimes investigation photo of the
disfigured leg of a survivor from
Ravensbrueck, Polish political
prisoner Helena Hegier (Rafalska),
who was subjected to medical
experiments in 1942. This photograph
was entered as evidence for the
prosecution at the Medical Trial in
Nuremberg. The disfiguring scars
resulted from incisions made by
medical personnel that were purposely
infected with bacteria, dirt, and slivers
of glass.
Genocides (before & after Holocaust)
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Armenia- 1915
Bangladesh- 1971
East Timor- 1975
Cambodia- 1978
Rwanda- 1996
Former Yugoslavia- Kosovo, Bosnia,
Chechnya
Iraq
Survivors Today
200,000 in 2014
100,000 were
children during the
war, making them in
their 70s today.
• 2/3 of survivors went to Israel
• Another 150,000 scattered all over the world
Holocaust Denial
• Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly
illegal in 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech
Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel,
Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The
Netherlands,Poland, Portugal, Romania,
Slovakia and Switzerland.
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
What role will you play?
Counting the
Costs
· Historians
believe that
anywhere from 30
million to 60
million people
died as a result of
World War II.
Wesel,
Germany –
97% of the
town’s
buildings
were
destroyed
by Allied
bombs.
· Cities and towns worldwide were completely destroyed and
millions of people were left homeless.