The Other 6 Million

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The Other 6 Million
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Key Terms

• Jehovahs Witnesses
• Sinti
• Roma
• Law for the Prevention of Progeny with
  Hereditary Diseases
• Eugenics

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Lecture Outline

• I. The Other Six Million
• A. Jehovahs Witnesses
• B. Sinti and Roma
• C. Homosexuals
• D. Handicapped
• E. Poles

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Jehovahs Witnesses

• Jehovahs Witnesses was founded in the United
  States in the 1870s and they sent missionaries to
  Germany seeking converts in the 1890s.
• By the early 1930s, only 20,000 Germans were
  Jehovahs Witnesses.

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Jehovahs Witnesses (con.)

• Jehovahs Witnesses refused to swear allegiance
  to any worldly government.
• In April 1933, four months after Hitler became
  chancellor, Jehovahs Witnesses were banned in
  Bavaria and by the summer in most of Germany.

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Jehovahs Witnesses (con.)

• In 1936 a special unit of the Gestapo began
  compiling a registry of all persons believed to
  be Jehovahs Witnesses.
• By 1939, an estimated 6,000 Witnesses were
  detained in prisons or camps.

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Jehovahs Witnesses (con.)

• In the Nazi years about 10,000 Witnesses were
  imprisoned in concentration camps.
• An estimated 2,500 to 5,000 Witnesses died in
  camps or prisons.

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Sinti and Roma

• In 1939, 30,000-50,000 Gypsies lived in Germany
  and Austria.
• Gypsies are believed to have arrived in Europe
  from Northern India in the 1400s. They were
  called Gypsies because Europeans thought they
  came from Egypt.

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Sinti and Roma (con.)

• Under the July 1933 Law for Prevention of
  offspring with Hereditary Defects, physicians
  sterilized against their will an unknown number
  of Gypsies.
• Under the Law against Dangerous Habitual
  Criminal of November 1933, the police arrested
  many Gypsies along with others the Nazis viewed
  as asocial.

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Sinti and Roma (con.)

• During the war Gypsies were sent to ghettos in
  Poland and then to death camps.
• Many children died as a result of cruel medical
  experiments performed by Dr. Josef Mengele and
  other SS physicians.

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Sinti and Roma (con.)

• Approximately 225,000-500,000 Sinti and Roma were
  killed.
• After the war discrimination against Sinti and
  Roma in Europe continued.

12
Homosexuals

• In 1934, a special Gestapo division on
  homosexuals was set up.
• An estimated 1.2 million men were homosexuals in
  Germany in 1928.

13
Homosexuals (con.)

• Between 1933 and 1945 an estimated 100,000 men
  were arrested as homosexuals and of these some
  50,000 officially defined homosexuals were
  sentenced.
• Most of these spent time in regular prisons, and
  an estimated 5,000-15,000 were incarcerated in
  concentration camps.

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Homosexuals (con.)

• Some homosexuals were also victims of cruel
  medical experiments.
• After the war, homosexual concentration camp
  prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of
  Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused.

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The Handicapped

• The Law for the Prevention of Progeny with
  Hereditary Diseases, proclaimed July 14, 1933,
  forced the sterilization of all persons who
  suffered from diseases considered hereditary.

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The Handicapped (con.)

• Nazi Germany was not the first or only country
  to sterilized people considered abnormal.
  Before Hitler, the United States led the world in
  forced sterilizations.

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The Handicapped (con.)

• Advocated of sterilization policies in both
  Germany and the United States were influenced by
  eugenics.
• Eugenics is the study of hereditary improvement
  of the human race by controlled selective
  breeding.

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The Handicapped (con.)

• The forced sterilizations began in January 1934,
  and altogether an estimated 300,000-400,000
  people were sterilized under the law.

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The Handicapped (con.)

• In October 1939, Hitler initiated a decree which
  empowered physicians to kill patients considered
  incurable.
• Between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and
  physically handicapped people were murdered from
  1939-1945.

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Poles

• It is believed that between 1.8 and 1.9 million
  Polish civilians were victims of German
  occupation policies and the war.

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AP p. 880-897

• Causes and effects of US prosperity
• Yalta Conference
• containment doctrine
• Truman doctrine
• Marshall Plan

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AP p. 897-905

• National Security Act
• NATO
• General Douglas MacArthur
• Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)
• NSC-68
• Korean War