The Holocaust

1
The Holocaust
In words and pictures taken from The United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum Web Site
www.ushmm.org
2
The Holocaust

• the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored
  persecution and murder of approximately six
  million Jews by the Nazi regime and its
  collaborators.

3
Prewar photograph of three Jewish children with
their babysitter. Two of the children perished in
1942. Warsaw, Poland, 1925-1926.
4
Two German Jewish families at a gathering before
the war. Only two people in this group survived
the Holocaust. Germany, 1928.
5
A Jewish family in the Piotrkow Trybunalski
ghetto. All those pictured died in the Holocaust.
Poland, 1940. 
6
Two young cousins shortly before they were
smuggled out of the Kovno ghetto. A Lithuanian
family hid the children and both girls survived
the war. Kovno, Lithuania, August 1943.
7
Portrait of members of a Hungarian Jewish family.
They were deported to and killed in Auschwitz
soon after this photo was taken. Kapuvar,
Hungary, June 8, 1944.
8
Word Play

• "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning
  "sacrifice by fire.
• The Nazis frequently used euphemistic language to
  disguise the true nature of their crimes. They
  used the term Final Solution to refer to their
  plan to annihilate the Jewish people.

9
Genocide

• Genocide is a term created during the Holocaust
  and declared an international crime in the 1948
  United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
  Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The
  Convention defines genocide as any of the
  following acts committed with the intent to
  destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
  ethnical, racial or religious group, as sucha.
  Killing members of the groupb. Causing serious
  bodily or mental harm to members of the groupc.
  Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
  of life calculated to bring about its physical
  destruction in whole or in part d. Imposing
  measures intended to prevent births within the
  groupe. Forcibly transferring children of the
  group to another group. The specific "intent to
  destroy" particular groups is unique to genocide.
  A closely related category of international law,
  crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread
  or systematic attacks against civilians.

10
Why?

• The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in
  January 1933, believed that Germans were
  "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed
  "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called
  German racial community.

11
Asocials- outside the norm

• During the era of the Holocaust, German
  authorities also targeted other groups because of
  their perceived "racial inferiority" Roma
  (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic
  peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other
  groups were persecuted on political, ideological,
  and behavioral grounds, among them Communists,
  Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

12
THIRD REICH OVERVIEW

• The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the
  Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy
  established in Germany after World War I.
  Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as
  chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state
  (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly
  became a regime in which Germans enjoyed no
  guaranteed basic rights.

13
Germans cheer Adolf Hitler as he leaves the Hotel
Kaiserhof just after being sworn in as
chancellor. Berlin, Germany, January 30, 1933.
14

• After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag (the
  German Parliament), on February 28, 1933, the
  government issued a decree which suspended
  constitutional civil rights and created a state
  of emergency in which official decrees could be
  enacted without parliamentary confirmation.

15

• In the first months of Hitler's chancellorship,
  the Nazis instituted a policy of
  "coordination"--the alignment of individuals and
  institutions with Nazi goals. Culture, the
  economy, education, and law all came under Nazi
  control. The Nazi regime also attempted to
  "coordinate" the German churches and, although
  not entirely successful, won support from a
  majority of Catholic and Protestant clergymen.

16
POWER

• Extensive propaganda was used to spread the
  regime's goals and ideals. Upon the death of
  German president Paul von Hindenburg in August
  1934, Hitler assumed the powers of the
  presidency. The army swore an oath of personal
  loyalty to him. Hitler's dictatorship rested on
  his position as Reich President (head of state),
  Reich Chancellor (head of government), and
  Fuehrer (head of the Nazi party). According to
  the "Fuehrer principle," Hitler stood outside the
  legal state and determined matters of policy
  himself.

17
How did Hitler get everyone on his side?

• the use of propaganda to spread the ideals of
  National Socialism -- among them racism and
  antisemitism.
• the Nazi message was successfully communicated
  through art, music, theater, films, books, radio,
  educational materials, and the press.  

18
German children read an anti-Jewish propaganda
book titled DER GIFTPILZ ( "The Poisonous
Mushroom"). The girl on the left holds a
companion volume, the translated title of which
is "Trust No Fox." Germany, ca. 1938.
19
Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between
an "Aryan" and a black woman. The caption states
"The result! A loss of racial pride." Germany,
prewar.
20
This image originates from a film produced by the
Reich Propaganda Ministry. It is captioned "A
moral and religious conception of life demands
the prevention of hereditarily ill offspring."
Nazi propaganda aimed to create public support
for the compulsory sterilization effort.
21
A Nazi propaganda poster encourages healthy
Germans to raise a large family. The caption, in
German, reads "Healthy Parents have Healthy
Children." Germany, date uncertain.
22
Nazi propaganda poster warning Germans about the
dangers of east European "subhumans." Germany,
date uncertain.
23
"Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the
whole people... Propaganda works on the general
public from the standpoint of an idea and makes
them ripe for the victory of this idea." -Adolf
Hitler
24
The Nazi regime used propaganda effectively to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest until the very end of the regime. Nazi propaganda was likewise essential to motivating those who implemented the mass murder of the European Jews and of other victims of the Nazi regime. It also served to secure the acquiescence of millions of others -- as bystanders -- to racially targeted persecution and mass murder.  
25
The Stages

• Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the persecution
  and segregation of the Jews was implemented in
  stages.

26
Early Stages of Persecution

• During the first six years of Hitler's
  dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak of war
  in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than 400
  decrees and regulations that restricted all
  aspects of their public and private lives. Many
  of those laws were national ones that had been
  issued by the German administration and affected
  all Jews.

27

• The first wave of legislation, from 1933 to 1934,
  focused largely on limiting the participation of
  Jews in German public life.

28
1935-Nuremberg laws

• Excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and
  prohibited them from marrying or having sexual
  relations with persons of "German or
  German-related blood."
• deprived of most political rights. Jews were
  disenfranchised (that is, they had no formal
  expectation to the right to vote) and could not
  hold public office.

29

• The Nuremberg Laws did not identify a "Jew" as
  someone with particular religious beliefs.
  Instead, the first amendment to the Nuremberg
  Laws defined anyone who had three or four Jewish
  grandparents as a Jew, regardless of whether that
  individual recognized himself or herself as a Jew
  or belonged to the Jewish religious community.

30
"Aryanization

• Government agencies at all levels aimed to
  exclude Jews from the economic sphere of Germany
  by preventing them from earning a living.
• Jews were required to register their domestic and
  foreign property and assets, a prelude to the
  gradual expropriation of their material wealth by
  the state.
• Likewise, the German authorities intended to
  "Aryanize" all Jewish businesses, a process
  involving the dismissal of Jewish workers and
  managers, as well as the transfer of companies
  and enterprises to non-Jewish Germans, who bought
  them at prices officially fixed well below market
  value.

31
1937-1938

• In 1937 and 1938, the government forbade Jewish
  doctors to treat non-Jews, and revoked the
  licenses of Jewish lawyers to practice law.
• Jews were barred from all public schools and
  universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters,
  and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were
  forbidden to enter designated "Aryan" zones.
• The government required Jews to identify
  themselves in ways that would permanently
  separate them from the rest of the population. In
  August 1938, German authorities decreed that by
  January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing
  first names of "non-Jewish" origin had to add
  "Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their given
  names. All Jews were obliged to carry identity
  cards that indicated their Jewish heritage, and,
  in the autumn of 1938, all Jewish passports were
  stamped with an identifying letter "J".

32
The Ghettos

• ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in
  which the Germans concentrated the municipal and
  sometimes regional Jewish population and forced
  them to live under miserable conditions.
• The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in
  German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet
  Union alone.

33
What happened to the ghettos?

• With the implementation of the "Final Solution"
  (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning
  in late 1941, the Germans systematically
  destroyed the ghettos.
• The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot
  ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or
  deported them, usually by train, to killing
  centers where they were murdered. German SS and
  police authorities deported a small minority of
  Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and
  concentration camps.

34
Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
are led by German soldiers to the assembly point
for deportation. Photo credit National
Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
35
Mobile Killing Units

• Einsatzgruppen squads composed primarily of
  German SS and police personnel.
• By autumn 1941, the SS and police introduced
  mobile gas vans. These paneled trucks with the
  exhaust pipe reconfigured to pump poisonous
  carbon monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing
  those locked within, were to complement ongoing
  shooting operations.

36
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.
37
Sardine Packing

• Often with the help of local informants and
  interpreters, Jews in a given locality were
  identified and taken to collection points.
  Thereafter they were marched or transported by
  truck to the execution site, where trenches had
  been prepared. In some cases the captive victims
  had to dig their own graves. After the victims
  had handed over their valuables and undressed,
  men, women, and children were shot, either
  military style, standing before the open
  trench, or lying face down in the prepared pit,
  in a manner that came to be known irreverently as
  sardine packing.

38
CONCENTRATION CAMPS, 1933-1939

• The term concentration camp refers to a camp in
  which people are detained or confined, usually
  under harsh conditions and without regard to
  legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are
  acceptable in a constitutional democracy.

39

• The first concentration camps in Germany were
  established soon after Hitler's appointment as
  chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after
  the Nazis came to power, The SA
  (Sturmabteilungen commonly known as Storm
  Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel Protection
  Squadrons -- the elite guard of the Nazi party),
  the police, and local civilian authorities
  organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate
  real and perceived political opponents of Nazi
  policy.

40
Arrival of political prisoners at the Oranienburg
concentration camp. Oranienburg, Germany, 1933.
41
Roll call for newly arrived prisoners, mostly
Jews arrested during Kristallnacht (the "Night of
Broken Glass"), at the Buchenwald concentration
camp. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938.
42
EXPANSION OF THE CAMP SYSTEM 1939

• As Nazi Germany expanded by bloodless conquest
  between 1938 and 1939, the numbers of those
  labeled as political opponents and social
  deviants increased, requiring the establishment
  of new concentration camps.

43
(No Transcript)
44

• The concentration camps increasingly became sites
  where the SS authorities could kill targeted
  groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi
  Germany. They also came to serve as holding
  centers for a rapidly expanding pool of forced
  laborers deployed on SS construction projects,
  SS-commissioned extractive industrial sites, and,
  by 1942, in the production of armaments, weapons,
  and related goods for the German war effort.

45
The Final Solution

• Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities
  deported millions of Jews from Germany, from
  occupied territories, and from the countries of
  many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing
  centers, often called extermination camps, where
  they were murdered in specially developed gassing
  facilities.

46
Killing centers

• also referred to as "extermination camps" or
  "death camps were almost exclusively "death
  factories."
• German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000
  Jews in the killing centers either by
  asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.

47
Hairbrushes of victims, found soon after the
liberation of Auschwitz. Poland, after January
27, 1945.
48

• Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the
  camps were sent immediately to death in the gas
  chambers (with the exception of very small
  numbers chosen for special work teams known as
  Sonderkommandos). The largest killing center was
  Auschwitz-Birkenau, which by spring 1943 had four
  gas chambers (using Zyklon B poison gas) in
  operation. At the height of the deportations, up
  to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at
  Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Over a million Jews
  and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet
  prisoners of war were killed there by November
  1944.

49
Death Marches

• In the final months of the war, SS guards moved
  camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often
  called death marches, in an attempt to prevent
  the Allied liberation of large numbers of
  prisoners.

50
A view of the death march from Dachau passing
through villages in the direction of
Wolfratshausen. German civilians secretly
photographed several death marches from the
Dachau concentration camp as the prisoners moved
slowly through the Bavarian towns of Gruenwald,
Wolfratshausen, and Herbertshausen. Few civilians
gave aid to the prisoners on the death marches.
Germany, April 1945.
51
(No Transcript)
52

• During these death marches, the SS guards
  brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following
  their explicit orders, they shot hundreds of
  prisoners who collapsed or could not keep pace on
  the march, or who could no longer disembark from
  the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died
  of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced
  marches were especially common in late 1944 and
  1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to camps
  deeper within Germany.

53
(No Transcript)
54
When did the reign end?

• As Soviet troops fought their way towards the
  Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide on
  April 30, 1945.
• The Allies defeated Nazi Germany and forced a
  German surrender on May 8, 1945.

55
Liberation

• Soviet forces, British forces, and American
  Forces liberated the camps and those that
  survived the death marches survived
• Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in
  the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay
  unburied. Only after the liberation of these
  camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed
  to the world.
• Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult
  road to recovery.

56
Soon after liberation, a Soviet physician
examines Auschwitz camp survivors. Poland,
February 18, 1945.
57
Emaciated survivors of the Buchenwald
concentration camp soon after the liberation of
the camp. Germany, after April 11, 1945.
58
American military personnel view corpses in the
Buchenwald concentration camp. This photograph
was taken after the liberation of the camp.
Germany, April 18, 1945. 
59
Liberated prisoners demonstrate the overcrowded
conditions at the Buchenwald concentration camp,
Germany, April 23, 1945.
60
(No Transcript)
61
(No Transcript)
62
(No Transcript)
63
REMEMBER
"...to remain silent and indifferent is the
greatest sin of all... Elie Wiesel
Prevent this from happening again
Honor the dead
Wiesel at age 15
64
Bert and Anne Bochove, who hid 37 Jews in their
pharmacy in Huizen, an Amsterdam suburb, pose
here with their children. The two were named
"Righteous Among the Nations." The Netherlands,
1944 or 1945.
65
Dr. Joseph Jaksy, who rescued 25 Jews during the
war. He provided them with hiding places, money,
medicine and forged identification papers. Jaksy
was named "Righteous Among the Nations."
Czechoslovakia, prewar.