Transcript Slide 1 - ACHSEnglish

The Holocaust
Only after we assimilate the history of the Holocaust
can we transform the future.
– Alan Rosenberg, Professor of Philosophy, Queens College
A teaching resource created by the Birmingham Holocaust Education Committee.
July 2007
www.bhamholocausteducation.org
The Holocaust
• 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.
• From the Greek word meaning “a sacrifice by
burning.”
• In Hebrew the term “shoah” is used, meaning
“catastrophe.”
The Holocaust was Unique:
 Never before had a government, one that had prided itself on its own
citizens’ high level of education and culture, sought to define a religious group as
a race that must be eliminated throughout an entire continent, not just within a
single country.
 Never before had a government use the great power of technology for such
destruction, seen in the horror of Auschwitz – a death camp that “processed”
10,000 Jews a day.
 Never before had a government used their best and smartest people to
start destruction and used mobile killing units to systematically kill
approximately 1.5 million people in 2 years.
 Never before had a government sought to dehumanize a group through
such a devastatingly thorough and systematic use of propaganda that included
the use of film, education, public rallies, indoctrination of the youth, radio,
newspapers, art and literature.
Jewish Life Before the War
Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an
obligation to be one. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Malka Orkin (left) and her
friend Tusia Goldberg.
Tusia, whose father later
became a member of the
Bialystok ghetto Jewish
council, survived the war.
Malka did not survive.
Lova Warszawczyk rides
his tricycle in the garden of
his home in Warsaw
shortly before the start of
World War II. He survived.
A group of Jewish children pose in
their bathing suits while
vacationing in the resort town of
Swider, near Warsaw.
The two girls on the right are Gina
and Ziuta Szczecinski. Both
perished during the war.
Jewish family celebration in
Radomsko, Poland. Almost all of this
town’s 12,000 Jews were deported to
the death camp at Treblinka.
Group portrait of the extended family of
Mottle Leichter in Janow Podlaski,
Poland. Only 3 in the picture survived.
Bystanders (85%)
Victims
Rescuers (< 0.5%)
Perpetrators (< 10%)
The Victims
It is true that not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.
- Elie Wiesel, 1995
Jews
Political Opponents
Habitual Criminals
Handicapped
Homosexuals
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Roma & Sinti (Gypsies) Poles
Freemasons
Immigrants
Soviet P.O.W.’s
American P.O.W.’s
African-Germans
Who was Hitler?
• Born in Austria.
• Reared Catholic.
• Aspired to be an artist.
Rejected by Vienna Academy of Arts on two occasions.
Never attended college.
• Exposed to antisemitic influences while in Vienna.
• Moved to Germany to avoid Austrian draft.
Fought for Germany in World War I.
Born in Austria
Braunau-am-Inn
Reared Catholic
Adolf (center) with schoolmates, 1900.
St. Michael’s Catholic Church
attended by Hitler as a child.
Leonding, Austria
Moved to Germany to avoid Austrian draft.
Fought for Germany in World War I.
Hitler served in the Bavarian contingent of the German Army.
Factors Contributing
to the Rise of the Nazis
All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke, British Philosopher, 1729-1797
•
•
•
•
Treaty of Versailles
Economics
German Nationalism
Antisemitism
German territorial losses as dictated by the Treaty of Versailles.
Unemployment in Germany
1928-1933
September 1928
650,000
September 1929
1,320,000
September 1930
3,000,000
September 1931
4,350,000
September 1932
5,102,000
January 1933
6,100,000
Inflation in Germany
DATE
GERMAN MARKS
U.S. DOLLARS
1919
4.2
1
1921
75
1
1922
400
1
Jan. 1923
7,000
1
July 1923
160,000
1
Aug. 1923
1,000,000
1
Nov. 1, 1923
1,300,000,000
1
Nov. 15, 1923
1,300,000,000,000
1
Nov. 16, 1923
4,200,000,000,000
1
German children with stacks of inflated currency,
virtually worthless in 1923.
Worldwide Depression, 1929
Bread lines for the unemployed in the U.S.
Antisemitism
Recognizing public support for his antiJewish comments, Hitler capitalized on
these anti-Jewish feelings that had
existed for centuries in the German
population and offered the Jews as a
scapegoat for the country’s current
financial woes. He would claim that
Germany had lost World War I because
of the Jews, that democracy and
communism were Jewish inventions,
and that the Jews were engaged in a
conspiracy for world domination. It was
the Jews who controlled society and
made Germans suffer.
Antisemitic political cartoon entitled
"Rothschild" by the French caricaturist,
C. Leandre, 1898.
Birth of the Nazi Party
• In 1919 Hitler joined the
fledgling “German Worker’s
Party.”
German propaganda postcard showing an early
Hitler preaching to the fledgling Nazi Party.
• In 1920 he took control of the
group and changed the name to
the National Socialist German
Worker’s Party, National
Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter
Partei, NSDAP, or Nazi for short.
• It was here that Hitler
discovered two remarkable
talents: public speaking and
inspiring personal loyalty.
Assembly of the Nazi Party, 1922, Coburg, Germany
What the Nazis Believed
Anyone who interprets National Socialism as merely a political movement knows almost
nothing about it. It is more than a religion. It is the determination to create the new man.
- Adolf Hitler
•What the Nazis Believed
•Racial Science
“Second Creation”
Theodor Seuss Geisel, April 3, 1942
Racial Science
The law of existence requires uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live. –
Adolf Hitler
Nazi physicians conducted
“bogus” medical research in an
effort to identify physical evidence
of Aryan superiority & non-Aryan
inferiority. The Nazis could not
find evidence for their theories of
biological racial differences
among human beings.
This kit contains 29 hair
samples used by doctors,
anthropologists, and
geneticists to determine racial
makeup of individuals.
Establishing racial descent by
measuring an ear at the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Anthropology.
Caliper to measure skull width.
Bystanders (85%)
Victims
Rescuers (< 0.5%)
Perpetrators (< 10%)
The Perpetrators
History teaches us to beware of demagogues who wrap themselves in the flag
in an attempt to appeal to the worst aspects of nationalism.
- Alistair Nicholson
Reinhard Heydrich
Joseph Goebbels
Hermann Goering
Adolf Eichmann
Rudolf Hess
Heinrich Himmler
Nazi Intentions Revealed
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
- Lillian Hellman
•Anti-Jewish Policies
•Boycott of Jewish Shops: April 1, 1933
•Nazi Book Burnings: May 10, 1933
•Nuremberg Laws: September 15, 1935
•The November Decree: November 14, 1935
Anti-Jewish Policies
How can such a monstrous crime as the Holocaust occur?
It begins when people start thinking of themselves as ‘us’ and of others as ‘them’.
- Ted Gottfried, Deniers of the Holocaust
Goals:
• social death of Jews
• removal of Jewish presence/influence
from German society
Means of Accomplishment:
• verbal assaults
• physical assaults
• legal/administrative restrictions
Laws Restricting Civil Rights
The Law for the Protection of German Blood & German Honor forbade
either marriage or sexual relations between Jews and Germans.
Laws Restricting Personal Rights
Jews were only permitted to purchase
products between 3-5 p.m. This was one
step in the overall Nazi scheme of
eliminating Jews from economic, social
and cultural life.
Bench with inscription “Only for Jews.”
Sign on a phone booth
in Munich prohibiting
Jews from using the
public telephone.
Sign forbidding Jews in public pool.
Laws Restricting Education
Political Cartoon from Der Stürmer entitled: “Away with Him”
The long arm of the Ministry of Education pulls a Jewish teacher from his classroom.
March 1933.
Laws Restricting Occupation
With the rise of Nazism, nothing the Jews had done for their country made any difference…
- Alfred Gottschalk, Jewish Survivor
Erich Remarque,
author.
Albert Einstein,
Nobel Prize winner.
Sigmund Freud,
psychoanalyst,
Otto Klemperer,
conductor.
Laws Restricting Private Property
and Business
"Aryanization" announcements in a newspaper.
Aryanization was the process of transferring Jewish businesses
to German control.
Boycott of Jewish Shops
April 1, 1933
SA soldiers stood at the entrances to Jewish shops and professional offices
discouraging non-Jewish patrons from entering.
Signs were posted warning: “Germans! Beware! Don’t Buy from Jews!”
Nazi Book Burnings
May 10, 1933
Where books are burned, in the end, people will be burned.
- Heinrich Heine (19th century German poet)
Uniformed Nazi party officials carrying
confiscated books.
Hamburg, Germany,
The public burning of "un-German"
books by members of the SA and
university students.
Nuremberg Laws
September 15, 1935
Reich Flag Law
• Official colors of the Nazi state are black, red, and white.
• The national flag is the swastika flag.
• Jews are forbidden from flying the German flag.
Reich Citizenship Law
• German citizenship is denied to Jews. They are given the status of “subjects.”
• Jews can not vote, own property, operate a business, or be paid wages as employees.
Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor
• Forbids marriage or sexual relations between Jews and Germans.
• Bans employment in Jewish homes of any German female under 45 years of age.
The November Decree
November 14, 1935
German:
Mischlinge, 2nd Degree:
4 “German”
grandparents
1 Jewish grandparent
Mischlinge, 1st Degree: * 2 Jewish grandparents
Jew:
3+ Jewish grandparents
* 1st Degree Mischlinge would be considered Jews if
they met any of the following criteria:
- practiced the Jewish religion
- were married to a Jew
- or were children born after September 15,
1935 to one Jewish parent and one
German parent
Nazi Propaganda
How can such a monstrous crime as the Holocaust occur? It begins when
people start thinking of themselves as “us” and of others as “them”.
-Ted Gottfried, Deniers of the Holocaust
• Education in Nazi Germany
• Books
Typical School Day
The teacher begins and ends the instruction
by leading the assembled students in the
greeting:
The teacher raises the right arm and
declares “Heil Hitler.”
The students raise their right arms and
respond Heil Hitler.”
Raising the Swastika Flag at a school
in Berlin.
The Poisonous Mushroom
“The Poisonous Mushroom”
“How Jewish Traders Cheat”
“The Experience of Hans and
Else with a Strange Man”
“How To Tell A Jew “
World War II: 1939-1942
Gentile Poles assembled for
forced labor. June 1943
A German soldier stands on a
toppled Polish monument.
Krakow, Poland
Polish boys imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire fence.
Approximately 40,000 Polish children were kidnapped and imprisoned in the
camp before being transferred to Germany during "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), The
children were used as slave laborers in Germany.
Isolation of Polish Jews
1. Humiliation & Terror
2. Forced Labor
3. Expulsion
4. The Jewish Badge
Humiliation & Terror
Harassment of a
Jewish man.
German soldiers
cutting the beard
of a Jew.
A soldier tutors two Jewish men on how to give Jewish men are forced to race against
the Nazi salute correctly. one another while riding on the backs
of their fellows.
Forced Labor
Jews rounded up for forced labor
October, 1939
Jews forced to sweep the streets.
Expulsion
Polish Exiles, 1941 Arthur Szyk
The Jewish Badge
More than 800 ghettos were established by the Nazis in Eastern Europe.