The Holocaust

Why the Jews?Prejudice against Jews common in Europe

Used as a scapegoat for Germany’s troubles after WWI

Hitler Rises to PowerPut members of Nazi party into key gov’t positions.

Created Gestapo (secret police)

created Nazi-run schools and Nazi propaganda that printed lies about Jews

Nuremberg Laws1935

Jews must wear yellow Star of David.

Jewish businesses must be boycotted.

Took away all Jewish rights & their property.

Jews not allowed to: be judges, teachers, lawyers, soldiers, or to marry Germans.

Kristallnacht“Night of Broken Glass”

Within 15 hours:

200 synagogues (temples) destroyed

7,500 Jewish stores looted & destroyed

More than 100 Jews killed...many more to come...

30,000 Jews rounded up & sent to concentration camps

GhettosJews sent to live there.

Unsanitary and crowded.

Small areas within a city sealed off with high walls and/or barbed wire.

Hitler’s Final SolutionGoal was to “exterminate” all Jews worldwide

Hard labor, torture, starvation.

Used mass killings and mass graves to hide the evidence.

Used gas chambers, firing squads, and crematoriums.

6 million Jews killed; about 5 million non-Jews as well