Extermination of the Jews

The Nazi Holocaust

Standard WHII.12b: The student will demonstrate knowledge of the worldwide impact of World War II by examining the Holocaust and other examples of genocide in the twentieth century.

Essential Understandings:Essential Understandings: There had been a climate of hatred against Jews in

Europe and Russia for centuries. Various instances of genocide occurred throughout the

twentieth century.

Essential Questions:Essential Questions: Why did the Holocaust occur? What are other examples of genocide in the twentieth century?

Terms to KnowTerms to Know

Genocide: The systematic & purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious,

or cultural group

Anti-Semitism:Prejudice against or hostility toward Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. In its extreme form, it defames Jews as an inferior group and denies their being part of

the nation[s] in which they reside.

Holocaust:Systematic, government-sponsored, persecution and murder of

approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and it’s collaborators. Means “sacrifice by fire.”

Elements Leading to the HolocaustElements Leading to the Holocaust

Totalitarianism combined with nationalism History of anti-Semitism Defeat in WWI and economic depression

blamed on German Jews Hitler’s belief in the master race (Aryans) Final Solution: extermination camps, gas

chambers

Racial Superiority Mein Kampf (1925)

“My Struggle” Considered the Bible of Nazism Presents Hitler’s major ideas on anti-

Semitism, anti-Communism, superiority of the Aryan race, German nationalism, the state’s superiority over the individual, and Hitler’s feelings of hostility for democracy

Hitler described a racial hierarchy with: Aryans (the culture-producing race) at the top Jews, Africans, Gypsies, the mentally and

physically disabled, etc. (the culture-destroying races) at the bottom

The importance of the book is that it calls for German domination of Europe

Goal: Remove Inferior TypesGoal: Remove Inferior Types

Hitler's goal was to remove the inferior types from Germany, making more lebensraum (living space) for the superior Aryans

Jews were the special object of his hatred

The War Against the JewsThe War Against the Jews When the Nazis began to

wage war against the Jews, they used rhetoric and propaganda

From an anti-Semitic children's book. The sign reads "Jews are not wanted here."

The headlines say "Jews are our misfortune" and "How the Jew cheats." Germany, 1936.

PROGRESSIONPROGRESSION OF DISCRIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATION TOWARDS JEWSTOWARDS JEWS

The NAZI party and Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933 and slowly began their program against the Jews of Germany

In 1933 there were 566,000 Jews living in Germany

Each new year in Germany led to harsher policies directed towards the Jews

1933 NAZIS boycott Jewish businesses

Issue decree that defines non-Aryans

Hermann Goering creates the GESTAPO (the secret police of Nazi Germany)

Nazis pass law allowing for forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects

First concentration camps are built Dachau near Munich Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern

Germany Ravensbruck for women

Eugenics & SterilizationEugenics & Sterilization It also meant eugenics – the science of

improving the race through selective breeding

The Nazis required the sterilization of those who carried hereditary defects, such as types of blindness and deafness and certain diseases which were thought to have a genetic basis, such as Huntington's Chorea and epilepsy

To further purify the race, women of mixed blood were to be sterilized

Those with ideal Aryan characteristics were bred like livestock

The "Sterilization Law" explained the importance of weeding out so-called genetic defects from the total German gene pool:

Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in

population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the

hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering

from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring

burden the community.

1934 Jews are not allowed to

have national health insurance

The SS (Schutzstaffel) is formed (Hitler’s personal bodyguards)

Hitler becomes Der Fuhrer and receives a 90% approval rating from the people

1935: Nuremberg Race Laws

M arry o r h av e sexw ith A rya ns

h ire A rya n w o m ena s m a ids

h a ve r ig h ts o fc i t izen sh ip

Je ws are no t a llow e d to :

Many Jews fled to other European nations or to the United States. Most, however, stayed behind, convinced that as fully integrated German citizens they were safe. In doing so, they failed to understand the seriousness of their predicament.

HarassmentHarassment

Harassment followed

the limitations

on the

civil rights of

Jewish citizens

Jewish children humiliated in the classroom

1936 SS Deathshead

division is created to guard camps

Heinreich Himmler is appointed Chief of the German Police

Jews are not allowed to teach Germans

Jews are not allowed to be accountants or dentists

“Eternal Jew” exhibit opened in Germany, which promoted stereotypes of Jews and warned Germans

1937

1938 Nazi troops enter Austria

(lebensraum = union with Austria)

League of Nations considers helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but no country will take them

Jews are not allowed to practice medicine

Why was Austria so important to Hitler?

1939 Reinhard Heydrich is ordered to

speed up emigration of Jews The St. Louis, a ship crowded with

930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe

Jews must hand over all gold and silver

Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia and invade Poland (SPARK of WWII)

Forced labor decree issued and all Jews must wear yellow stars as a method of identification

Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany

“I ask nothing of Jews except that they should disappear”

Flight and RescueFlight and Rescue

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/flight_rescue/

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/flight_rescue/story.htm

Operation T4: EuthanasiaOperation T4: Euthanasia The Nazis advocated the removal of those

who would not improve the German race and had no use in society – those who Hitler called the "useless eaters"

This meant killing the mentally ill, the terminally ill, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They euphemistically called this "euthanasia,“ which is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering

Letter from chief of institution for feeble-minded in

Stetten to Reich Minister of justice, Dr. Frank: Sept. 6, 1940

Dear Reich Minister, The measure being taken at present with mental

patients of all kinds have caused a complete lack of confidence in justice among large groups of people. Without the consent of relatives and

guardians, such patients are being transferred to different institutions. After a short time they are notified that the person concerned has died of

some disease...

Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jew living in Paris, shot and killed a member of the German Embassy in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis: his family, along with thousands of other Jews, had been transported in boxcars and dumped at the Polish border

In response, the German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, incited Germans to "rise in bloody vengeance against the Jews Mob violence broke out as the German police

stood by and watched Storm troopers and members of the SS beat

and murdered Jews along with the mobs Nearly 1000 synagogues were burned,

Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed, and thousands of Jews were rounded up during

KRISTALLNACHT =

“Night of Broken Glass” (Nov. 9, 1939)

1939

Grynszpan

Goebbels

Message from SS Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices & Field Offices

November 10, 1938 Regards: Measures against Jews tonight.

a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods).

b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives and to arrest looters.

c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will be safeguarded at all cost against damage.

As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be arrested in all districts. Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested. After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews to the camps....

The burning of synagogues during Kristallnacht

Synagogues burned on the night of Kristallnacht

1940 German Jews, who had been

forced to live in ghettos, were deported to Poland

Ghettos of Lodz, Krakow and Warsaw are sealed off (these ghettos will be liquidated starting in 1942); however, some Jews remained in ghettos until the end of WWII (1945)

Jewish people were herded into ghettos (walled off parts of the city in which the people could be more easily controlled). Joseph Goebbels called the ghettos "death boxes“

Ghettos did not originate during this time period. The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live. Various officials, ranging from local municipal authorities to the Austrian Emperor Charles V, ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome,

Prague, and other cities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Waiting for a drink of water in the Warsaw Ghetto, where water and food were in short supply.

This ration card from October 1941 entitled a resident to 300 calories a day

Children climbing the walls to smuggle food into the Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: April - May 1943

One of the most famous photos taken during the Holocaust shows Jewish families arrested by Nazis during

the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, and sent to be gassed at Treblinka extermination camp.

1941 Nazis invade the Soviet

Union (Operation Barbarossa)

Hitler issues infamous “Commissar Order”

SS Einsatzgruppen follow advance of German Army

“Liquidate (shoot/kill) all Communist officials you encounter!”

EinsatzgrubbenEinsatzgrubben Not all murdered Jews

were killed in the camps

A mobile killing force called the Einsatzgrubben conducted many executions, particularly in the Ukraine and Baltic states Jews from Lubny (Ukraine) assembled

just prior to execution

EINSATZ AREA OF OPERATIONS

Jewish victims who have been asked to remove their outer garments prior to execution

Einsatzgrubben executions in the Ukraine

The ravine at Babi Yar, scene of mass executions in 1941. Ensatzgrubben killed 33,000 citizens of Kiev by gunning them down on the edge of the ravine.

1942: The “Final Solution” The “Final Solution”• At the Wansee Conference on January 20, 1942, the decision of the “Final

Solution” was made to systematically evacuate Jews from all over occupied Europe to camps in the east, where the entire Jewish population would be exterminated

• Three Phases:• Phase 1: Shooting – Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated –

They were taken to the woods and were shot one by one – their bodies were buried in mass graves

• Phase 2: Gas Vans – Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans – The vans were equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van

• Phase 3: Gassing – Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final Solution by sending Jews to camps (two types: Concentration camps and Extermination camps) – The most effective method for mass extermination became gassing in specially constructed gas chambers (disguised as showers), from which the bodies were removed to adjacent crematoriums

• This plan of genocide was carried out with efficiency and the victims, whose will to resist had been sapped by prolonged starvation and disease, were often unaware until the last moment that they were going to be gassed

• Nevertheless, there was some Jewish resistance, both passive and active

Jewish ResistanceJewish Resistance

Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass murder fueled Jewish resistance to the Germans

Resistance took many forms: Organized armed resistance (e.g., Warsaw ghetto uprising) Unarmed resistance (e.g., production and spread of

underground newspapers; acts of sabotaging the German war effort – stealing documents, tampering with vital machinery, producing faulty munitions, setting fires in factories, etc.)

Escaping from the ghettos into the forests (e.g., Bielski brothers) Aid and rescue (e.g., parachutists were dropped in German-

occupied regions to give whatever help they could to Jews in hiding)

Spiritual resistance (e.g., attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people)

RescuersRescuers Foreign governments had policies to stay neutral or to

restrict immigration

Some diplomats and foreign officials disobeyed their governments by issuing visas and other protective documentation that allowed refugees to escape German-occupied territories

Some rescuers established safe houses or hid Jews in their embassies or private residences

Consequences for rescuers who were caught: By their own government = transferred, fired, or stripped of their

ranks and pensions By the Nazis = imprisoned, deported to a concentration camp,

and sometimes murdered

RescuersRescuers Oskar Schindler (German industrialist) Chiune Sugihara (Japanese consul general

posted in Lithuania) Charles “Carl” Lutz (Swiss vice-consul in

Budapest, Hungary) Feng-Shan Ho (Chinese consul general in Vienna,

Austria) Varian Fry (American journalist who volunteered to head

up the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization)

Raoul Wallenberg (Appointed to be the first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest, Hungary, with a mission to save as many Budapest Jews as possible)

Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler: An Unlikely HeroOskar Schindler: An Unlikely Hero

When asked why he had intervened on behalf of

the Jews, Schindler replied (1964 interview):

“The persecution of Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In

1939 and 1940, they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in

ghettos. In 1941 and 1942, this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had

overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice.”

Concentration &Concentration &Extermination Camps Extermination Camps (1940-1945)(1940-1945)

Concentration CampsConcentration Camps In the next phase of the "final

solution," Nazis separated out the young, the old, and the ill and sent them to their deaths (this process was called “selection”)

The gas chamber was used in the extermination camps such as Auschwitz

Those who could work obtained only a temporary reprieve

Inmates at Sachenhausen wearing

identifying badges

AUSCHWITZ Extermination camp located in Poland Started operations in January 1940 Himmler chose Auschwitz as the place for the

Final Solution Had 4 gas chambers/crematories by 1943 Mass killings with Zyklon B gas Commanded by Rudolph Hoess Recorded 12,000 kills in one day

THE SS AT AUSCHWITZWERE ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS

TEETH WITH GOLD

PILES OF GLASSES

ZYKLON-BGAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE COMPARED TO GAS.

DROPPED FROM CEILINGS IN GAS CHAMBERS.

Jewish prisoners are loaded onto the train from Westerbork, a transit camp, on their way to a concentration camp

New prisoners arriving at the camps

Prisoners at Dachau

Children victims of Nazi medical experiments

A view of Majdanek, which served as a concentration camp and also as a killing center for Jews

The final destination for those who could not work, the gas chamber. This is the gas chamber at Flossenburg.

Ovens in crematorium

A warehouse full of shoes and clothing confiscated from the prisoners and deportees gassed upon their arrival. The Nazis shipped these goods to Germany.

Nazis sift through the enormous piles of clothing left behind by the victims of a massacre (1941)

A mass grave in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

AuschwitzAuschwitz

Camp Totals

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000

Auschwitz Belzec Chelmo

killed in camp

LiberationLiberation

In 1945, the camps were liberated by Allied forces

In the last days the Nazis were still unwilling to give up the plan to exterminate the Jews

They either executed Jews in the camps as they abandoned them, death-marched them into the interior of Germany, or cut off food and water, leaving them to die

Children at Auschwitz. The lucky ones were liberated in 1945.

Mass grave site at Bergen-Belsen. The British found many dead when they liberated the camp.

HOLOCAUST STATISTICS

01,000,0002,000,0003,000,0004,000,0005,000,0006,000,0007,000,0008,000,0009,000,000

10,000,000

BEFORE SURVIVORS

JEWISHPOPULATION

STATISTICS BY COUNTRY

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

3,500,000

POLAND USSR HUNGARY GERMANY

BEFOREAFTER

Jewish population before, Jewish population after Holocaust

SummarySummary

Elements Leading to the Holocaust: Totalitarianism combined with nationalism History of anti-Semitism Defeat in World War I and economic depression

blamed on German Jews Hitler’s belief in the master race Final solution: Extermination camps, gas

chambers

GENOCIDEGENOCIDE

Other Examples of GenocideOther Examples of Genocide

Armenians by leaders of the Ottoman Empire Peasants, government and military leaders, and

members of the elite in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin

Artists, technicians, former government officials, monks, minorities, and other educated individuals by Pol Pot in Cambodia

Tutsi minority by Hutu in Rwanda

An earlier act of genocide to remember: During World War I, the Turkish government, considering the Armenians sympathetic to its Russian foe, deported them in large numbers from Anatolia (Turkey). Massacres and the hardships of the journey resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 Armenians in what has been called the "first genocide of modern times." Thousands migrated to Russian Armenia, where in 1918 an independent Republic of Armenia was established. In 1920, they turned the government over to the Communists rather than surrender to the Turks, and the Soviet Republic of Armenia came into being.

Journal ProjectJournal Project

Vilna Ghetto Fighters (1942-43) The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April – May,

1943) Treblinka Revolt (August 2, 1943) Auschwitz-Birkenau Revolt (October 7,

1944)