THE HOLOCAUST

A WAR WITHIN A WAR

The Holocaust: War Within a War

• GENOCIDE

Total annihilation of a race or group of people

• ANTI-SEMITISM

The hatred of Jews

• Hitler blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s failures

• SCAPEGOATS

• Jews forced from their homes and relocated to slums called ghettos

• After 1941 Germany developed

ENDLOSUNG

(the Final Solution)

• 1941-1942 – mass extinction of Jews using bullets

• Method deemed too slow

• New method – gas chamber

• Zyklon-B (pesticide at the time for killing bugs, rodents on ships, buildings etc.)

• Jews separated on arrival to Concentration Camp based on ability to do work

• Able bodied men in one line

• Elderly, women, children, sick in the other

• Men worked to death through attrition or SS beatings

• Others gassed right away

• News did not reach England and N. America until 1944

• Much of it viewed as propoganda since nobody could believe something that bad was possibly true

• Estimates of 2/3 of all European Jews murdered during this time period

• Who else?

POLICIAL PRISONERS

JEHOVAH’S WITNESS

POW

GYPSIES

6 MILLION DEATHS

• WE SHOULD NEVER FORGET THE HOLOCAUST