Transcript The Holocaust - misskimelewskisclass

The Holocaust
February 20, 2013
• Holocaust: Nazi attempt to kill all
Jews
• Includes all Jews & “undesirables”
– Gay; twin; gypsy; disabled
(mental/ physical); criminal;
dated/ married Jewish
– Speak out against Hitler
– “Anti-Social”
• Genocide: Mass elimination of
entire group of people
WHY???
• Racist Nazi Ideas
– Aryan myth - superior to all
• Blame Jews for EVERYTHING
– World War I loss; Depression
Holocaust begins as soon as Hitler takes
power (1933)
1. Hitler urged Germans to boycott
Jewish owned businesses
2. No gov’t jobs or jobs in banking,
stock exchange, law, journalism, or
medicine
3. Nuremburg Laws
– Deny citizenship to Jews
– Ban marriage between Jews &
non-Jews
– Segregated Jews at every level
4. Propaganda
– Newspapers attack on Jews
– Children taught in schools that
Jews “polluting” Germany
– Comic books
• Between 1933 - 1937
– 130,000 Jews flee Germany & Austria
(artists, doctors, scientists)
Why didn’t others leave too???
• Great Depression: Not welcome in other
countries
– Immigration limits
• 1933 - 1st concentration camp built
– Dachau
– Not designed to kill (work camp)
Concentration Camps
• Tattoo numbers on arm/
• Vertically striped clothes
• Torture/ kill with no fear of reprimand
• Starve/ disease
• Medical experiments
– No anesthesia
– Kill/ deform
Holocaust Continued
February 21, 2013
• Places conquered (Poland, Denmark, France)
– Force Jewish population into ghettos
– Construct concentration camps
• 1942 - Wannsee Conference
– New design for camps
– Plan to kill over 11 million Jews
Auschwitz
• South Poland
• Gas: carbon monoxide or insecticide, OR
• Mass execution with guns
• Take what want & burn in crematory
– Human fat - soap
– Hair - wigs, slippers, mattresses, etc.
– Cash, gold fillings, wedding rings, etc.
• How many died???
– MILLIONS
– No real number could be known
• Records burned
Could the Holocaust have been
prevented?
1. Immigration policies strict
– Great Depression
– Worry about selves
2. Apathy: don’t care
– North America: Europe is far
away
• Can’t relate
3. Underestimate Hitler
– Big fear was Soviet Union/
communism
4. 1940s: news does NOT travel
fast
– No TV/ internet in homes
• No specific details known about
Holocaust during WWII
– Specifics not known until allies
liberated camps after WWII
Allies heard some stories about camps
• Stalin: no concern
• Churchill & FDR: sympathy but
thought focus should be on defeating
Hitler
– If war ends, they can get the
people out of the camps
• No pressure on countries to NOT
send Jews
• Don’t know magnitude
– Internment camps in U.S. for
Japanese
• ENORMITY of Holocaust became
real when camps liberated (freed)
– Piles of bodies
– Warehouses full of hair, jewelry,
shoes, etc.
– Ashes
• Lieutenant Winters (Band of
Brothers)
– “The memory of starved, slaved men,
who dropped their eyes and heads
when we looked at them through the
chain link fence, in the same manner
that a beaten, mistreated dog would
cringe, leaves feelings that cannot be
described and will never be forgotten.
The impact of seeing those people
behind that fence left me saying, ‘Now
I know why I’m here.’”