Final Solution to the Jewish Question

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Final Solution to the Jewish Question
Overview Social Studies 8 Mr. Eckers
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Ghetto Life
Deportation to death camps
Children eating in the streets
Forced child labor
Children being deported for death
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Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Units)
Members of an Einsatzkommando (mobile killing
squad) before shooting a Jewish youth. The boy's
murdered family lies in front of him the men to
the left are ethnic Germans aiding the squad.
Slarow, Soviet Union, July 4, 1941.
Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before
they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments.
This photo, originally in color, was part of a
series taken by a German military photographer.
Copies from this collection were later used as
evidence in war crimes trials. Lubny, Soviet
Union, October 16, 1941.
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Ghettos to Concentration Camps
Saying goodbye to family before Lodz Ghetto
liquidation to Chelmno death camp, 1942. You can
see the yellow Star of David all Jews were forced
to wear.
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Concentration Camps
Entrance to Auschwitz. Jews were led to believe
that work will make them free which was false.
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Concentration Camps
Forced Labor in a German Camp
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Concentration Camps
Forced onto cattle cars for deportation to Belzek
Extermination Camp (Lublin, Poland, 1942)
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Concentration Camps
Selection of inmates arriving at Birkenau in
May 1944. If you appeared fit for slave labor,
you were sent to the right. If you were sent to
the left, you were immediately sent to the gas
chambers.
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Concentration Camps
Barbed-wire fences at Auschwitz, taken by Allied
troops liberating the camp in January 1945.
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Concentration Camps
Inmate identification photos (Auschwitz,
Poland) Each person received a dehumanizing
tattoo on his or her arm for identification.
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Concentration Camps
Hungarian Jews on their way to the gas chambers
at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944.
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Medical Experiments
Mengele (Angel of Death) would perform
outrageous, dangerous medical experiments on
victims to test genetics or human endurance.
This was a test to see if seawater could be made
fit for human consumption.
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Medical Experiments
Medical experiments on Gypsy twins to test for
genetic traits. One example was the injection of
chemicals to alter eye color. Most were
terminal patients and were later dissected.
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Medical Experiments
Victims of medical experiments
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Liberation Photos
January 27, 1945 Soviet liberators carry out an
emaciated child from Auschwitz.
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Liberation Photos
Bundles of human hair found at Auschwitz after
liberation, intended for German wig-makers.
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Liberation Photos
Examination of camp survivors after liberation
(February 18, 1945)
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Liberation Photos
Hairbrushes of victims
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Liberation Photos
Zyklon B pellets (poison used in gas chambers)
found when liberating Majdanek camp (Poland, July
1944)
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Liberation Photos
American military personnel view corpses in the
Buchenwald concentration camp after liberation on
April 18, 1945.
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Liberation Photos
Survivors of Auschwitz. Many later died due to
disease.
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Liberation Photos
View of Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany
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Liberation Photos
Human remains found still in ovens after
liberation at Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany.
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Liberation Photos
Piles of corpses after the liberation of
Mauthausen camp in Austria (May 5, 1945). Nazis
fled before cremating the remains.
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Liberation Photos
After liberation, most victims went to Displaced
Person (DP) camps, where they attempted to find
family members or relocated to either the United
States or Israel.
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Testimony
The fact is that all these were once
clean-living and sane and certainly not the type
to do harm to the Nazis. They are Jews and are
dying now at the rate of three hundred a day.
They must die and nothing can save them - their
end is inescapable, they are too far gone now to
be brought back to life. I saw their corpses
lying near their hovels, for they crawl or totter
out into the sunlight to die. I watched them
make their last feeble journeys, and even as I
watched they died.
Peter Coombs, British soldier, May 4, 1945 letter
to his wife after liberation of Bergen-Belsen.
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Testimony
As we entered the camp, the living skeletons
still able to walk crowded around us and, though
we wanted to drive farther into the place, the
milling, pressing crowd would not let us. It is
not an exaggeration to say that almost every
inmate was insane with hunger. Just the sight of
an American brought cheers, groans and shrieks.
People crowded around to touch an American, to
touch the jeep, to kiss our arms--perhaps just to
make sure that it was true. The people who
couldn't walk crawled out toward our jeep. Those
who couldn't even crawl propped themselves up on
an elbow, and somehow, through all their pain and
suffering, revealed through their eyes the
gratitude, the joy they felt at the arrival of
Americans.
Captain J.D. Pletcher, 71st Division Headquarters
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Testimony
Our first experience with the camp came as a
traumatic shock. The first evidence of the
horrors to come was a string of forty railway
cars on a railway spur leading into the camp.
Each car was filled with emaciated human corpses,
both men and women. A hasty search by the stunned
infantry soldiers revealed no signs of life among
the hundreds of still bodies, over 2,000 in all.
Felix L. SparksRetired Brigadier General,
Australia
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Nuremberg Trials
German officials on trial for crimes against
humanity after the war, where many were senteced
to death.
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Nuremberg Trials
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REMEMBER
Most certainly, there were well over a hundred
thousand Allied soldiers who were eyewitnesses to
the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, along
with a considerable number of Holocaust
survivors. To those sick people in our society
who say that it never happened, I say Tell us
who were there that it never happened, instead of
trying to disseminate your bigotry and hatred by
total revision of the Holocaust history. Your
efforts will never prevail.
Felix L. SparksRetired Brigadier General,
Australia