The Holocaust Overview

8/7/2019 The Holocaust Overview

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The Jewish Holocaust: An Overview

Mark Blanchfield

ENG 102 Sec. 104

Larry Nueberger

4 April 2011



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A brief overview of what happened

The Holocaust was brought about by Nazi Germany during World War II. It

entailed the horrific slaughtering of six million Jewish people. The Nazi party enacted

laws that made it a crime to be a Jew and eventually the punishment was death in which

all Jews had to be killed. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews and confined them to ghettos

awaiting execution. While waiting they were subject to inhumane living conditions. The

Nazi persecution was brought about by theSS(Protection Squad), the SA (Storm

Troopers) and the SD (Death's Head Units). In 1941 mass murders of Jews started and

the Nazis started deporting Jews to labor camps or death camps.The persecution started in

1933 and the mass murdering ended with the liberation in 1945.

The Nazis rise to power

The Nazis had a slow start to poweraccording to Yad Vashem¶s web site. Adolf

Hitler became associated with the National Socialist

Party in 1919 and quickly became its leader; the group

was small at that time and did not carry much political

clout. In 1923 the party carried out an unsuccessful

uprising in attempt to gain power. Following the

uprising Hitler was imprisoned and later released. After

this he regrouped the faction. In 1930 the Nazi party

rose to power with elections brought about by an

economic crisis and other issues. They were represented

Adolf Hitler¶s rise to power

http://bit.ly/fTsIiT





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servants among other things (Gavin, ³The NurembergLaws´).

Moreover, the implementation of these laws brought Jewish segregation and was

just the beginning of more laws to strip rights from Jews.After the Nuremburg Laws were

implemented, much debate was brought about among Nazi leaders on how to determine

who is a Jew. This led to the creation of a chart for the leaders to determine who is a Jew,

half Jew or an Aryan. After these laws were in effect, the Jews thought the worst was

over which was true for several more years (Gavin, ³The Nuremberg Laws´).

Kristallnacht

Later came Kristallnachtreferred to as ³the night of broken glass´, and as stated

by Gavin, was brought about by a Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan who was

living in Paris at the time.The Germans by order of the SS deported many thousands of

Jews to Poland and the Grynspan family was among them. When the Jews arrived at the

border the Polish would not let them enter the country (³The Night of Broken Glass´).

Herschel was told of this andbecame enraged overwhat happened to his family. In

addition, he was looking at being removed from France because his request for

permanent residency was denied. In his fury he went to the German embassy and killed

one of the officials. Hitler¶s propaganda minister used the killing to bring about a plan for

a ³popular uprising´ against the Jews, in which there would be no visible ties with

Hitler¶s administration. However, his plan failed and the uprising was carried out by the

SA, SS and party leaders (Gavin, ³The Night of Broken Glass´)



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On the night of November 9, 1938, all throughout Germany and Austria, these

men broke out the windows of Jewish businesses and homes. They also burned

synagogues. There were thousands of businesses

and over two hundred synagogues destroyed.Close

to one hundred Jewish men were killed. In

addition, there were around 25,000 Jews taken to

the Dachau concentration camp and many other

camps that were already established (Gavin, ³The

Night of Broken Glass´).

In 1938 the Nazis implemented many new laws to strip Jews of every right. Some

of the laws invalidated all Jewish passports and required all Jews to add a name that

would identify them as Jews. Nazi leaders pushed for the ³Aryanization´ of all businesses

forcing all Jewish business owners to sell to non-Jewish Germans.

Nazi storm troopers conducted deportations of all Polish Jews back to their homeland.

Poland was unprepared for the large number of refugees and forced the deported Jews to

stay in abandon buildings in the border town of Zbaszyn (YadVashem, ³1938´,

³Zbaszyn´).

The Rounding up of Jews. Following this the Germans invaded Poland in 1939

and quickly conquered it. There were close to two million Jews living in Poland at that

time. Many hademigrated from Germany and they fell into the hands of the Nazis once

again. At this time the Nazis no longer tried to appease the rest of the world with their

actions. The SS squad joinedother military units and wreaked havoc on the Jews and the

Poles. The Jews were required to wear ³the badge of shame´ which was the Star of David

The day after Kristallnachthttp://bit.ly/14tTBJ





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A mass grave

http://bit.ly/hfkhkc

the conditions, these camps claimed the lives of somewhere between 795,889 and

955,215men(USHMM, ³Concentration Camp System: In Depth´).

³The Final Solution to the Jewish Question´

As stated by Yad Vashem¶s website, around the beginning of ³Final Solution of

the Jewish Question´ (the Nazis plan to kill all the Jews),the Nazis invaded the Soviet

Union in June of 1941. The first mass killings of Jews and communists were carried out

by Einsatzgruppen units. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four mobile killing squads- A,

B, C, D (Yad Vashem, ³The Beginning of The Final Solution´).

The first of these despicable mass

murders was conducted by squad C in September

of 1941 at Babi-Yar which is located near Kiev,

Ukraine. The squad spent two days killing 33,771

Jews.Up to this point woman and children were

killed in the crossfire, but they were now targets

of extermination (Yad Vashem, ³The Beginning

of The Final Solution´).

They continued these killings until late 1941 when the Germans realized they

were not winning the war with the Soviets. As a result, the killings stopped so the Jews

could work making roads, military equipment and other things to help the war continue.

Early in the following year, the killings resumed(Yad Vashem, The Beginning of The

Final Solution´).



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The house where the conference took place

http://bit.ly/gr038T

TheWannsee Conference. After a short time, the Wannsee conference was held

with theNazi elites in January of 1942. The

purpose of the conference was to determine how

to kill the Jews in a more effective and

impersonal manner. The mass shootings were

having adverse psychological effects on the

Nazi troops. The Nazis had already been

experimenting with new and more effective

ways to kill people. The leaders concurred the most effective way to fast and impersonal

killing was to use gas chambers(The Holocaust History Project).

Following the conference they built death campsto carry out the gassing. Now

that the Nazis had the answer to their problem, they quickly started to transport all Jews

to these death camps for mass extermination (Vogelsang and Larsen, ³Extermination

Camps´).

The Extermination methods of the Germans

Many execution methods were trieduntil 1942 when they held the Wannsee

Conference. The first were mass shootings in which the Nazis had the Jews dig massive

holes. The executioners made the victims line up at the edge of the pit and they were

murdered by a firing squad. After everyone dropped it to the pit, the slaughterers had the

next group line up for assignation and this continued for some time (Yad Vashem, ³The

Beginning of The Final Solution´).

The mass shootings of woman and children had a major psychological impact on

the Nazis, so they looked for a new way to kill. The second method was theuse of box



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trucks. The trucks were sealed and fitted with a pipe that directed all of the trucks exhaust

into the back were the victims were crowded. This was effective in not having the victims

being watched while being killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ³Gassing

Operations´).

The gassing trucks proved to be too slow for large scale extermination and a more

efficient way was developed. The Germans started to use chambers were they would

pump in ether carbon monoxide or Zyklon-B gas into a large room filled with many men,

woman and children. This proved to be the most effective way of mass execution (United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ³Gassing Operations´).

Death camps.These were built and used to the fullest extent after the ³Final

Solution´ was decided upon. There were six death camps including Chelmno, Treblinka,

Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec and Auschwitz.

Most of the camps used carbon monoxide

except Auschwitz and Majdanek which used

Zyklon-B gas (Vogelsang and Larsen,

³Extermination Camps´).

There were three Auschwitz camps in

close proximity. Auschwitz-Birkenau also known

as Auschwitz II was the largest gassing facility of all. Prisoners arrived in cattle cars to

the camp. There was a selection process were the SS would take a small number of

people and send them to forced labor and the rest were quickly moved into the gas

chambers. The Nazis made the gas chambers to resemble showers to trick the victims into

entering. After the victims were gassed they were moved into a crematorium and

Inside the main gas chamber at Auschwitzhttp://bit.ly/eMv9Xl



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burned.(United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum, ³Auschwitz´).At times the crematories

could not handle the amount of people and they

were thrown into piles and burned in the open

(Vogelsang and Larsen, ³Extermination Camps´).

Auschwitz II in its most efficient time was

killing around 6,000 people a day. It claimed the

lives of around 1,085,000 people from October 1941 to November 1944, when the SS

dismantled the gas chambers (USHMM, ³Auschwitz´). The total number of people killed

between all six of the death camps was over 3,000,000 (Vogelsang and Larsen,

³Extermination Camps´).

The liberation of the camps

When the Holocaust was coming to an end because the Nazis were losing the war,

the SS started to force the prisoners on³Death Marches´ from the camps in Poland toward

the interior portion of Germany. Thousands of men died on these marches because of

starvation, exhaustion or execution (USHMM, ³Death Marches´). Around 200,000 to

250,000 prisoners died on these marches (Yad Vashem, ³The Final Stages of the War and

the Aftermath´).

In 1945, U.S., Soviet and British

forces swept across Europe and liberated the

camps and ghettos. When they came across

these ³Death Marches´ they were disbanded.

When the forces entered the camps they

One of the crematoriums at Auschwitzhttp://bit.ly/e4Bkbd

Piles of corpses after camp liberation

http://bit.ly/i0guQi



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found massive amounts of dead bodies and human remains. In addition, they found

starving and diseased prisoners (USHMM, ³Liberation of Nazi Camps´).

After liberation.The Jews returning to Germany were not welcomed back home

after the liberation. They were met with hostility and anti-Semitic gangs quickly formed.

These gangs murdered close to 1,500 Jews within the first month (Yad Vashem, ³The

Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath´).

Some Jews headed toward Poland after encountering such hostility in an effort to

live peacefully. ³The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee´ provided support

for the displaced Jews by providing food, medical care and other necessities (Yad

Vashem, ³The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath´).

Other Jews left toward Palestine. Around 70,000 arrived in Palestine, but over

50,000 were arrested and were again put into camps due to a British mandate limiting

immigrants. The Joint Distribution Committee helped the Jews with their connection to

Palestine (Yad Vashem, ³The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath´).

³On November 27, 1947, the United Nations resolved to terminate the British

Mandate for Palestine and to divide the country

into two states: one Jewish and one Arab.´ On

the next day a war began and the Jews gained

their independence (Yad Vashem, ³The Final

Stages of the War and the Aftermath´). The

State of Israel was formed in May 1948 and the

Jewish people finely had a place to establish

The Israel flaghttp://bit.ly/gdc8V3



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their home (USHMM, ³The Aftermath of the Holocaust´). The Jews who once had to

wear the Star of David for shame now display it on their flag with pride.



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Works Cited

Gavin, Philip. The History Place.N.p., 4 July 1996. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

---.³The Night of Broken Glass.´

---.³The Nuremberg Laws.´

The Holocaust History Project.³ The Wannsee Conference´.N.p., 1998. Web. 24 Feb.

2011.

Jones, Adam. ³Case Study: The Jewish Holocaust, 1933-45.´ Gendercide Watch .N.p.,

1999. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum.N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.

---. ³The Aftermath of the Holocaust.´

---. ³Auschwitz.´

---. ³Concentration Camp System: In Depth.´

---. ³Gassing Operations.´

---. ³Germany: Establishment of the Nazi Dictatorship.´

---. ³Ghettos.´

---. ³Liberation of Nazi Camps.´

Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B. Larsen.The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide

Studies.N.p., 2002. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.

---. ³The Concentration Camps, 1933-45.´

---. ³Extermination Camps.´



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Y ad Vashem- The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.International

Institute for Holocaust Research, 2011.Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

---. ³1938.´

---. ³Antisemitism.´

---. The Beginning of The Final Solution.´

---. ³Conquest of Poland and Attacks on Jews.´

---. ³Death Marches.´

---. ³Expansion of German Conquest and Policy Towards Jews.´

---. ³The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath.´

---. ³Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution.´

---. ³Warsaw.´

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