The Holocaust

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The Holocaust

• Genocide of European Jews and others the
  systematic extermination of millions of European
  Jews, Slavs, intellectuals, homosexual people,
  and political dissidents by the Nazis and their
  allies during World War II.

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Adolph Hitler

• Among his goals was the removal of the
  non-aryans
• in particular the Jews

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The Holocaust is Nazi Germanys systematic murder
of European Jews
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The numbers

• 6 million Jews - 2/3 of the European Jewish
  population had been massacred.
• 5-6 million others also died in captivity

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By the 1880s

• Anti-semitism had come to mean hostility towards
  Jews.
• When the Nazi party took over in 1933,
  anti-semitism became the official policy of the
  nation.

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Nuremberg Laws

• 1935
• Stripped Jews of citizenship.
• Forbid marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

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Nuremberg Laws

• Dismissed Jewish employees and managers
• Jews were marked with a red letter J
• All Jewish women were given the middle name of
  Sarah, men were given the middle name of Israel.

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Concentration Camps

• Places where POWs were confined, under harsh
  conditions. They soon held many other
  undesirable people, including the homeless,
  homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, people with
  mental and physical disabilities and gypsies.

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Organized attacks on Jews begin in early 1938.
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Where can they go?

• 1933-1937 Jews seek to escape Germany
• They go to Palestine, Latin America and the U.S.

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Roosevelt calls for a conference

• He wants to discuss the growing numbers of Jews.
• The conference fails to deal with the situation.
• U.S. does not ease its immigration laws.

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With the invasion of Poland in 1939,

• 2 million Jews are put under German control.

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The Warsaw Ghetto

• Jews were rounded up and confined in the Warsaw
  Ghetto
• It was sealed off by a wall and topped with
  barbed wire (when possible)
• Hunger, overcrowding and lack of sanitation
  brought on disease.

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Einsatzgruppers

• Or mobile killing units were sent to Poland in
  1939.
• They murdered upper-class citizens,
  intellectuals, priests and influential Jews.
• In 1941 they were sent to eliminate Communist
  political leaders in the Soviet Union

Digging their own graves before execution.
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Hitler

• Accepts mass murder by firing squad as
  appropriate for a war zone
• but not for nations already conquered.

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January 1942- The Wannsee Conference

• Germany plans for the Final solution to the
  Jewish Question
• The plan called for special concentration camps,
  where genocide or deliberate destruction, of
  Europes Jewish population was to be carried out.

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1941

• Nazis experiment to find out the most efficient
  way of killing people.
• They chose a poison gas to be administered in
  special chambers, disguised as showers
• on the first day 2300 Jews were killed.

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Death Camps

• They exist only for mass murder
• Jews were transported to the extermination
  centers.
• Most of them did not know where they were going
  when they boarded the trains.

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• From The Auschwitz Album, the only photographic
  documentation of the entire extermination process
  at Auschwitz. An SS has just sent the woman with
  the infant to join those being sent to the
  crematoria her hair is covered in the tradition
  of the Orthodox Jewish wife. A man is standing
  between the columns missing his pants and one
  shoe this was a common occurrence in the
  overcrowded boxcars

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Gas Chambers

• The elderly
• most women and children
• and those who looked weak were put into gas
  chambers and killed.

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Crematoria

• Guards had prisoners take the dead bodies to a
  crematoria, where the bodies were burned in huge
  ovens.

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Men and women who escaped immediate death had
their heads shaved and a registration number
tattooed on their arms.Their barracks had no
bathrooms or beds.There food was usually a soup
made of rotten vegetables.
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Some Jewish resistance

• April 1943- 700 Jews armed with pistols and
  homemade bombs, hold out against 2000 Germans
  with tanks.
• Most escape attempts failed, but a few people
  managed to bring word of the death camps to the
  outside world.

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U.S. response

• We show little interest in the Holocaust during
  the war years.
• Immigrant quotas were not raised
• existing quotas for Jews were not filled.

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FDR creates the War Refugee Board

• Try to help people threatened by the Nazis

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Oskar Schindler

• Employs 1300 Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
• These jobs saved them from being shipped to the
  gas chamber.

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As allied armies advanced in late 1944, the
Nazis abandoned concentration camps outside of
Germany and moved prisoners to German soil.
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May 1945

• As Germany collapsed, American troops are able to
  witness the horrors of the Holocaust.

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Nuremberg Trials

• Allies place 24 leading Nazis on trial for
  crimes against humanity
• At the Nuremberg trials, 12 received death
  sentences.

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An important principle is established. . .

• Individuals were responsible for their own
  actions. No longer could you say that you were
  following orders.

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Numbers to know

• Poland lost the most Jews during the Holocaust
• 88-91 of the Jewish Polish population was lost
• Lithuania and Greece lost the second most in
  terms of percentages.
• Italy lost the least amount of Jews.

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Depressingbut important information11 question
quiz coming up.All fill-in-the-blanks
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Standards

• Analyze the causes of WWII including
• a. Appeasement
• b. Axis expansion
• c. The role of the allies

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Analyze the consequences of WWII includinga.
Atomic weaponsb. Civilian and military losesc.
The Holocaust and its impactd. Refugees and
povertye. The United Nations
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Analyze the results of political, economic and
social oppression and the violation of human
rights includinga. The exploitation of
indigenous peopleb. the Holocaust and other
acts of genocide
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Analyze how governments and other groups have
used propaganda to influence public opinion and
behavior
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Detect bias and propaganda in primary and
secondary sources of information
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Develop and present a research project
includinga. Collection of datab. Narrowing
and refining a topicc. Construction and support
of a thesis
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Analyze the impact of U.S. participation in WWII,
with emphasis on the change from isolationism to
international involvement including the reaction
to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Analyze the impact of the U.S. participation in
WWII with emphasis ona. Events on the home
front to support the war effort, including
industrial mobilization, women and minorities in
the workforceb. The internment of
Japanese-Americans