Transcript The Holocaust: Pt. 2

The Holocaust: Pt. 2
Concentration Camps
Between 1939
and 1945 six
million Jews
were
murdered,
along with
hundreds of
thousands of
Gypsies,
Lesbian/
Gays,
Jehovah’s
Witnesses,
disabled and
the mentally
ill.
Anti–Semitism: This is
the term given to racist
persecution of Jews.
The Holocaust was an
anti-Semetic act.
Hitler wanted to preserve
the “Aryan Race.”
Anti-Semitism (Nuremberg Laws)
• Once in power, Hitler and the Nazi party began
their persecution of the Jews.
• Jews were banned from government jobs, as well
as jobs in teaching, broadcasting, newspapers and
entertainment.
•
•
•
•
Jews were not allowed to marry non-Jews. (eugenics!)
Jews were also banned from many shops and public buildings.
By 1936, many Jews found that it was impossible to earn a living.
Those who could leave Germany did. Anne Frank and Albert Einstein are among
these people.
Propaganda:
Posters were used to convince Germans that
the Jews were a threat to their existence
and create anti-Semetic feelings.
This poster shows that the Jewish
people, represented by the octopus,
have a strangle hold on the world.
This is an illustration from a children's
book. The headlines say "Jews are our
misfortune" and "How the Jew cheats."
Germany, 1936.
“Kristallnacht” or “the Night of Broken Glass”
• In November, 1938, before the war had started, a
German Embassy official was shot by a Jew. Already
launching his anti-Semetic propaganda, a brutal
attack on German Jews followed.
• 7000 Jewish shops were looted and 20,000 Jews
were arrested.
• Many were beaten savagely.
• A huge fine was also forced on the Jewish
population.
The Ghettos
• Prior to the outbreak of the war, Hitler
began a systematic rounding up of
Jewish people.
• He had them confined to ghettos and
concentrations camps.
• Ghettos were isolated areas in the city
where Jews were confined and place
under heavy guard.
• Many of the Ghettos were
overcrowded. Several families were
living in the same quarters.
Anne Frank:
•"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken
away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly
and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big
camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If
it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway
and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them?
We assume that most of them are being murdered. The
English radio says they're being gassed."
- October 9, 1942
Ghettos were sealed off by walls constructed by Jewish
inmates. Armed guards would watch to make sure that
Jews did not leave the ghetto.
Healthy Jews living in the ghettos were selected for work
detail; like clearing snow from the streets.
The Jews living in the ghettos were eventually
transported to the newly constructed death camps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tGwjwK9pIM
A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH
CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS
Canada and the Holocaust
• Some Jews could afford to leave Europe before the war
broke out.
• In June 1939, the liner St. Louis arrived off Canada’s east
coast carrying 907 Jews.
• These refugees were already denied entry into Cuba,
Latin America, and the United States.
• Canadian immigration officials refused to allow the
passengers to enter Canada.
• The ship returned to Europe where they found a home in
the Netherlands.
• However, many of these Jews died in Concentration
camps when Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940.
• Only 4,000 Jews were allowed to enter Canada. The U.S.
took in 240,000 and Britain took in 85,000 Jews
The Nazi Death Camps
• Months before the end of the war, the Allies began to make horrifying
discoveries.
• They found the concentration camps.
• Most prisoners were Jewish, others were political prisoners who spoke out
against the Nazis.
• In 1942, the Germans developed a plan called the “Final Solution”. Every
Jewish man, woman and child would be transported to concentration camps
and exterminated.
• Hitler believed this would solve the “Jewish problem.”
• At Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen Jews were tortured,
hanged, shot, gassed and worked to death.
Jews were transported in
crowded cattle cars.
Jews arriving at the camps were
examined, registered, tattooed and
sorted.
Camps were protected with electric fences, barbed
wire, moats and guard towers. Guard dogs also kept
watch over prisoners.
• Jewish Women,
some holding
infants are forced
to wait in a line
before their
execution by
German and
Ukranian
collaborators.
After the Mass Execution
• German officials walk
through the bodies, making
sure everyone is dead.
In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis
ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all
traces. This was the task of Soviet POWs.
"I've reached the point where I hardly care
whether I live or die. The world will keep on
turning without me, and I can't do anything to
change events anyway. I'll just let matters take
their course and concentrate on studying and
hope that everything will be all right in the end."
•- February 3, 1944
Before poison gas was used ,
Jews were gassed in mobile gas
vans. Carbon monoxide gas
from the engine’s exhaust was
fed into the sealed rear
compartment. Victims were
dead by the time they reached
the burial site.
The different death camps:
Dachau: “Arbeit Macht Frei” means
“Freedom Through Work”
The iron sculpture symbolizes bodies being
electrocuted on an electric fence. The
prisoners are committing suicide rather than
face the horrors of the camp
Auschwitz- Poland
• First constructed to hold Polish
political prisoners
• The first extermination occurred in
September, 1941
• This eventually became the main site
for the “Final Solution”
BERGEN BELSEN
• Upon liberation by the British, the soldiers
came upon a gruesome scene.
• 13,000 corpses were piled in a mass grave.
• They died of Typhus and starvation as well as
execution.
• The people of the nearby town were forced
to witness the following scene and then
properly bury them.
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/holocaust/51
15.shtml
Living Conditions
Fumigation chamber to kill
lice
Punishment
Torture Rack:
prisoners put their feet
under the bar in front
and lay on their
stomach to be whipped
repeatedly.
The far wall is where executions
repeatedly took place.
“Shower Room” (gas chamber)
Some vents pump in gas while others put in fresh oxygen to ventilate room
enough to remove dead bodies.
There were also “Crematorium
Ovens:”
• Large ovens hold 2 – 3 people.
• Smaller ovens hold 1 – 2 people.
• Oven temperatures reach 2500
degrees C. to burn bones as well as
flesh.
• At times these ovens ran up to 24
hours a day to dispose of the
bodies.
THE AFTERMATH:
• The Allies found thousands of survivors suffering from starvation and disease.
• Many Jewish survivors refused to return to their former homes because of
anti-semitism that persisted in Europe.
• July 1946, Kielce Poland: 150 Jews returned and were greeted by rioters
who killed 41 and wounded 50 more.
• The U.S. still restricted the number of Jews who could immigrate to 80,000.
• Britain restricted Jewish immigration to their ‘colony’ Palestine.
• 250,000 Jews left for Palestine, but not all were there ‘legally’.
• The ship ‘Exodus’ with 4,500 was sent back to Germany by the British.
Footage Taken by Allied Liberators
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joWT9RGKYo4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0G3mTRh9ro&safety_
mode=true
The Aftermath:
• Eventually, after the war was over, several Jews began speaking out about
their experiences.
• This added to the shame of Germany after the war
• In addition to works like the diary of Anne Frank being published, many
created artwork.
• For example, David Olere was a Jew born in Poland in 1902. He was captured
and sent to Auschwtiz. He was registered as prisoner 106144.
• Olère began to draw at Auschwitz during the last days of the camp, when the
SS became less attentive. His works document the camp very well.
Their Last Steps
1946, three people supporting
one another as they take their
last steps towards the gas
chambers.
What adjectives describe the
physical condition of these
men?
How has the artist suggested
their loyalty to one another?
Punished in the Bunker
He uses something like an x-ray technique to show us the
cramped quarters in which prison inmates were often forced
to spend long periods of time. The cell was so narrow that
Olère was unable to sit, stretch or lie down for the 48 hours
of his punishment.
What detail tells you this is a self-portrait?
Even though we can see through the walls of the
bunker here, we cannot see into the prisoner's
mind. He seems quite passive, almost like a
sleeping man or a corpse. What do you suppose
his thoughts are?
Discussion:
Based on what you have learned in the past
few days, do you believe that the government
should have the right to secrecy within its own
country?
Is Germany as a country to blame for the
Holocaust? Why or why not?
Nuremberg Trials
• In the city of Nuremberg after the Second World War, a series of military
tribunals were held by the Allies to prosecute the prominent members of
leadership in Nazi Germany
• The first of the trials took place from November 1945 to October 1946. 23
of Germany’s most important political and military leaders were tried as
war criminals
• The most important target was said to be Hermann Goring, the highest official left
after Hitler’s death
Charges & Sentences
• The indictments were for:
• Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a
crime against peace
• Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes
against peace
• War Crimes
• Crimes against humanity
• Sentences: Most of these men were found guilty and either sentenced to life
imprisonment or death
• Hermann Goring was sentenced to death