THE HOLOCAUST

Nazi round-up of JewsNazi round-up of Jews

Jews awaiting deportation to campsJews awaiting deportation to camps

Camp prisonersCamp prisoners

Nazi torture of camp prisoners….hanging by the armsNazi torture of camp prisoners….hanging by the arms

Waiting to be shotWaiting to be shot

German medical experiments on prisonersGerman medical experiments on prisoners

Remains of prisoners in infirmaryRemains of prisoners in infirmary

WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?

• The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of not only 6 million Jews, but also 6 million others, approximately 12 million individuals by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Holocaust

• 6 million Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies were killed during the Holocaust.

WHEN DID IT BEGIN?

• 1939: When Germany invaded Poland the Nazis began to enslave the Poles and destroy their culture, deemed "subhuman."

• Thousands of Poles and Polish Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps.

• As a result of World War II, floods of prisoners in larger numbers, deported from German-occupied countries swamped the camps.

THE “FINAL SOLUTION” TO THE “JEWISH PROBLEM”

• Jews from western Europe were sent east to be killed.

• Concentration Camps were set up to be killing centers at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

• It was official state policy, the first ever to advocate the murder of an entire people.

What happened at the camps?

• Most adults and children were slain upon arrival.

• Those who weren't performed forced labor.

• Their identities were ripped from them, their hair shorn.

• They became a number, no longer a name, which was tattooed on their arm.

The WORST OF THE WORST

• Auschwitz-Birkenau – responsible for the largest number of

European Jews murdered as well as the largest number of Gypsies murdered.

– More than 1.25 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 9 out of 10 of those were Jews

WHO RAN THESE KILLING CENTERS?

• The SS operated the killing centers, and their methods were similar in each location.

• Railroad freight cars and passenger trains would bring in victims.

• Men were immediately separated from women.

• They then were forced into the gas chambers, disguised as showers.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?

• Nazis kept a record of all the people where the job was "complete“.

• Their goal: open a "museum" of the dead "race."

• It was this careful record keeping that couldn't be covered up in the hurried attempt to hide evidence or destroy it as the allies liberate the camps.

Nuremberg Trials

• First War trial in history• To punish war criminals• 12 Nazi leaders were

sentenced to death for their war crimes.

• Former Nazis are found everyday

• Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, and Keitel in front row

Nuremburg Trials

• 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 Polish political prisoner Helena Hegier who was subjected to medical experiments in 1942.

Goering, Hermann Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe (Air Force) Chief

Prosecution Points

Goering was responsibile for the elimination of Jews from political life and for the destruction and takeover of Jewish businesses and property.

In the End

Goering committed suicide on the day before his scheduled hanging by taking a cyanide pill that was smuggled into his cell.  Goering wrote in his suicide note, "I would have no objection to getting shot," but he thought hanging was inappropriate for a man of his position.

Deputy to the Fuhrer and Nazi Party Leader

Prosecution Points

Hess was "the engineer tending to the Party machinery."  He signed decrees persecuting Jews and was a willing participant in aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

In the End

Hess was sentenced to life in prison.  He remained--lost in his own mental fog-- in Spandau prison (for many years as its only prisoner) until he committed suicide in 1987 at age 93.

Nuremburg Trials

• The Allies also tried and executed Japanese leaders accused of war crimes.

• One of the earlier images of the war to come out from China, this photo appeared in LIFE magazine. (Nanking, China, 1937)

Nuremburg Trials

• Hsuchow, China, 1938. A ditch full of the bodies of Chinese civilians, killed by Japanese soldiers.

Nuremburg Trials

• Aitape, New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a katana sword. Many Allied prisoners of war were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.

Trials Today

• Nazis in our area