Holocaust

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Holocaust
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Setting the Scene

• Jews in Europe faced persecution for their
  beliefs for centuries.
• In the mid 1800s, a new form of anti-Jewish
  prejudice arose based on racial theories.
• Some thinkers claimed that Germanic peoples whom
  they called Aryans were superior to Middle
  Eastern peoples called Semites.
• Semites included Arabs and Jews but the term
  often applied only to Jews.

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Setting the Scene

• By the 1880s, Europeans used the term
  anti-Semitism to describe discrimination or
  hostility, often violent, directed at Jews.
• The suffering caused by WWI and the hardships of
  the Great Depression led many to look to those
  old theories to restore nation pride and a sense
  of purpose.
• Hitler revives the idea of Aryan superiority and
  expressed a hateful view of Jews in Mein Kampf.

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Persecution in German

• When Hitler came to power in 1933, he made
  anti-Semitism the official policy of the nation.
• No other persecution of Jews in modern history
  equals the extent and brutality of the Holocaust

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Persecution in Germany

• Holocaust Systematic murder of European Jews
• 6 million Jews, about 2/3 of European Jewish
  population and some 5-6 million other people
  would also die in Nazi captivity.

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Nazi Policies

• Early policies aimed at excluding Jews from all
  aspects of the countrys political, social, and
  economic life.
• In 1935, Nuremberg Laws limited Jews freedom

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Nazi Polices

• Gestapo Formed to identify and pursue enemies
  of the Nazi regime
• Also formed the SS Elite guard of the Nazi
  party.
• In charge of guarding the concentration camp

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Kristallnacht

• November 9, 1938
• Night of Broken Glass
• Destruction of Jewish businesses, homes, and
  synagogues

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Ghettos

• Ghettos Areas in which members of a minority
  group are concentrated
• Warsaw Ghetto Located in Poland. 400,000 Jews
  (30 of the city) confined in an area less than
  3 of the city

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Warsaw Ghetto

• Sealed off with a wall topped with barbed wire
  and guarded by Germans
• Received little food and a severe lack of
  sanitation
• Disease killed thousands every month

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Einsatzgruppen

• Mobile killing squads
• Established to shoot Communist leaders as well as
  all Jews in German occupied territory
• Hitler believed this was harmful to the killers

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Genocide

• Genocide Deliberate destruction of an entire
  ethnic or cultural group
• Use pesticide called Zyklon B to gas Jewish
• Seen by Hitler as a more effective means of
  killing Jews

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Death Camps

• 6 death camps in Poland including Auschwitz
• Jews were moved out of the ghettos and into
  cattle train cars for transportation

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Death Camps

• Most Jews were told they were going to the East
  to work
• Prisoners were organized and inspected after
  arriving at the camp
• The elderly, women with children, and those who
  looked too weak to work were herded into gas
  chambers.

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Death Camps

• Men and women had their heads shaved and a
  registration number tattooed on arm
• One set of clothes and slept in crowded, unheated
  barracks on hard wood pallets
• Medical experiments were performed on many
  prisoners

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Death Camps

• Daily food included a cup of imitation coffee, a
  small piece of bread, and thin soup made of
  rotten vegetables
• 12,000 could be gassed and burnt in one day at
  Auschwitz

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Jewish Resistance

• Most resistance failed or were quickly put down
  by the Germans
• April 1943, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 50,000 Jews
  fought for 27 days against 2,000 German troops.
  The Jews used pistols and homemade bombs
• After the 27 day standoff, Jews were killed for
  the resistance

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Liberation

• US government knew about the mass murder as early
  as November 1942.
• FDR created the War Refugee Board (WRB) in Jan
  1944 to try to help people threatened by the
  Nazis
• Helped save some 200,000 lives even after its
  late start

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Liberation

• Nazis abandoned camps in late 1944 and moved
  their prisoners to camps inside Germany
• Thousands died on death marches from camp to camp
  on the eve of liberation

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Nuremberg Trials

• November 1945
• Put 24 Nazi leaders on trial
• International Military Tribunal gave the death
  sentence to 12 of the 24
• Tribunal firmly rejected the Nazis argument that
  they were only following orders