The Holocaust

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The Holocaust
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What can you learn?

• History doesnt just happen. It occurs
  because individuals, organizations, and
  governments made choices.

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Holocaust Sources
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Define the term Holocaust

• The state-sponsored, systematic persecution
  and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany
  and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
• Jews were the primary victims 6 million were
  murdered.

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Why did this happen?
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There are no simple answers
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but the Holocaust was not inevitable.
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Pre-War 1933

• Approximately 9 million Jews were living in every
  country in Europe before the Nazis came into
  power in 1933
• Jews could be found in all walks of life
  farmers, factory workers, business people,
  doctors, teachers, and craftsmen

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Group portrait of members of the Jewish community
of Sighet in front of a wooden synagogue.
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Anti-Semitism

• While Hitler was rising to power, Jews were
  viewed as scapegoats for many problems. For
  example, people even blamed Jews for the Black
  Death that killed thousands in Europe during the
  Middle Ages.
• What does it mean to be a scapegoat?

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Germany Was A Totalitarian State

• The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German
  citizenship. They were prohibited from marrying
  or having sexual relations with persons of
  German or related blood.

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Jews, like all other German citizens, were
required to carry identity cards, but their cards
were stamped with a red J. This allowed police
to easily identify them. This was a pre-cursor
to the yellow armbands and the yellow stars that
were to come.
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Teaching Hate

• The Nazis used propaganda to promote their
  anti-semitic ideas.
• One such book was the childrens book, The
  Poisonous Mushroom.

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Persecution

• The Nazi plan for dealing with the Jewish
• Question evolved in three steps
• Expulsion Get them out of Germany
• 2. Containment Put them all together in one
  place namely ghettos
• 3. Final Solution annihilation

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• Kristallnacht was the Night of Broken Glass
  on November 9-10, 1938 when Germans attacked
  synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses

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• The Nazis aimed to control the Jewish population
  by forcing them to live in areas that were
  designated for Jews only, called ghettos.
• Ghettos were established across all of occupied
  Europe, especially in areas where there was
  already a large Jewish population such as Poland.
• Many ghettos were closed by barbed wire or walls
  and were guarded by SS or local police.

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Life in the ghettos was hard food was rationed
several families often shared a small space
disease spread rapidly heating, ventilation, and
sanitation were limited.
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There were six death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Belzec.
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Work Will Set You Free
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Each used gas chambers to murder the Jews. At
Auschwitz prisoners were told the gas chambers
were showers.
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• Most of the gas chambers used carbon monoxide
  from diesel engines.
• After the gassings, prisoners removed hair, gold
  teeth and fillings from the Jews before the
  bodies were burned in the crematoria or buried in
  mass graves.

To the left A collection of teeth with gold
fillings
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Aftermath

• Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate
  camp prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Maidanek in
  Poland. The troops were shocked at what they saw.

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• Most prisoners were emaciated to the point
  of being skeletal, and many camps had dead bodies
  lying in piles like wood.

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Former prisoners of the "little camp" in
Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in
which they slept three to a "bed." Elie Wiesel is
pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from
the left, next to the vertical beam.
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To put it into Perspective How many times would
9-11 need to occur to equal 6,000,000 deaths?

• It would have to happen every single day for
  5.8 years

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They Were People, not Statistics
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Why Remember?
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