The Holocaust

“Work brings freedom"

The Nazis’ Racist Policy

• Nazi foreign policy was guided by the racist belief that Germany was destined to expand eastward – and that a racially superior German (Aryans)

population should rule eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The Nazis used public displays to spread their ideas of race. The chart

shown here is titled "The Biology of Growth," and is labeled "Stages of Growth for Members of the Nordic

Race."

The Nazis’ Racist Policy

• Remain the purity of the Aryan Race– The ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall– They tried to determine whether people belonged to

the true "Aryan race” by measuring noses, skulls and ear sizes, checking the color of hairs

– Anyone who was a threat to the Aryan purity had to eliminated

• “Racially inferior" people, such as Jews and Gypsies had to be eliminated from the region

• They tried to limit the reproduction of these people by performing forced sterilizations and outlawing marriage between different races

This kit contains 29 hair samples used by doctors, anthropologists, and geneticists in Nazi Germany to determine the racial makeup of individuals.

• More than 200,000 disabled mentally and physically disabled patients living in institutional settings in Germany and German-annexed territories were murdered between 1940 and 1945.

Definitions

• The Holocaust – State-sponsored, systematic

persecution and killing of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

• Anti-Semitism – Prejudice against or hatred of Jews “Jews, you are not

welcome here” (Germany, 1936)

Life Before the Holocaust

• On April 1, 1933, the Nazis carried out the first nationwide, planned action against the Jews: – a boycott of Jewish businesses– The six-pointed "Star of David" was painted across

thousands of doors and windows.

Three Jewish businessmen are forced to march down a crowded Leipzig street while carrying signs reading: "Don't buy from Jews; Shop in German businesses!" Leipzig, Germany, 1935.

Nuremberg Laws 1935deprived the Jewish population in Germany of its

civil rights1. Defined Jews

2. Deprived Jews their rights to German citizenship

3. Forbade marriages between Jews and non-Jews

4. Limited what kind of job Jews could do(Many lost their jobs and businesses)

5. Jews were required to carry identity cards with an added J stamped on them

Only people with four German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood." Jewish are those who descends from three or four

Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right).

"Night of Broken Glass" Kristallnacht

• WHAT? – On the night of November 9,

1938, violence against Jews broke out across Germany

• They broke into houses, businesses, and synagogues, destroying everything– Result: it was clear the police

were on the side of the Nazis and they could overstep the law

Most families tried desperately to leave

WHY? A 17-yr-old Jewish boy who lived in Paris had killed a German diplomat

In two days…•over 1,000 synagogues were burned•7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted•dozens of Jewish people were killed•Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by

Forced to Flee

• Between 1933 and 1941, the Nazis aimed to make Germany judenrein (cleansed of Jews) – by making life so difficult for them that they would be

forced to leave the country

• However, many were unable to find countries willing to take them in– Many tried to go to the U.S. but could not obtain the

visas needed to enter

Locating the victims

• In 1939, the German government created the Jewish Registry– containing detailed

information on all Jews living in Germany

The “Final Solution”• WHAT:

– Name of Hitler’s plan to eliminate European Jews.

– It was a program of genocide

• which is systematic killing of an entire people/group

Human remains found in the Dachau concentration camp

crematorium after liberation. Germany, April 1945.

Ghettos - segregated Jewish areas were established in occupied Poland in 1939-44

– Polish and western European Jews were deported to these ghettos – Sealed off ghettos with barbed wire and stone walls– The Nazis hoped the Jews would starve to death– Life in the ghettos was usually unbearable. They were overcrowded, lack of

food, fuel and plumbing. Diseases spread fast.

Barbed-wire fence separating the Jewish ghetto from the rest of the city

Footbridge connecting two parts of the Warsaw ghetto

Killing squads EINSATZGRUPPEN

• After the Germans invaded Soviet Union in 1941, killing squads began to eliminate any Jew they could find in the occupied Soviet territory

– they shot them or gassed them in gas vans and dumped the bodies into mass graves

– This method was soon regarded as inefficient and as a psychological burden on the killers

Wherever the mobile killing squads went they shot Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. Mobile killing squads killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of Soviet political officials, partisans, and Roma

(Gypsies).

Deportations

• In January 1942, the Nazis began deportation of Jews from all over Europe to six extermination camps established in former Polish territory:

Who were the Nazis’ enemies?

• Jews • Roma (Gypsies) • Jehovah's Witnesses• Homosexuals who were seen as "abnormal" and "unmanly" behavior – threat to future of Aryan

race

• Political opponents• Soviet prisoners of war • Poles and other Slavic peoples were seen as inferior • Individuals with mental or physical disabilities

Marzahn, the first internment camp for Roma (Gypsies) in the Third Reich

Concentration Camp

• WHAT: – Prison camps constructed to hold "enemies of the

state." They were forced to work.– There were more than 100 concentration camps

Extermination Camp

• WHAT: – Nazi camps, equipped

with gassing facilities, for mass murder of Jews.

– There were six E-camps, all were located in Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec,

Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

Death Marches

• WHAT: – As the Allied closed in on the Nazi, the Germans

began to move the prisoners out of the camps and take them to camps inside Germany.

Prisoners were forced to march long distances in bitter cold, with

little or no food, water, or rest. Those who could not keep up

were shot.

Liberation• WHO:

– Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war.

• On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz

Allied troops, physicians, and relief workers tried to provide nourishment for the surviving prisoners, but many of them were too weak to digest food and could not be saved

• The Germans tried to empty the camps of surviving prisoners and hide all evidence of their crimes …– The prisoners who were still alive were living skeletons – Found mass graves and piles of corpses

The Survivors

• For the survivors, returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust was impossible. – Jewish communities no longer existed in much of Europe.– Jewish homes had been looted or taken over by others.– Many spent time in DP camps (displaced persons camp)

while waiting to leave to the United States, South Africa, or Palestine (May, 1948)

A girl in a children's center who was photographed in an attempt to help locate surviving relatives.

From 1945 to 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish

displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps and urban

centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy.

Nuremburg Trials WHAT:•A series of military trials between 1945-49 of 22 leading members of the Nazi party

– They were held accountable for the Holocaust

– 12 were sentenced to death

American guards maintain constant surveillance over Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg prison.

View of the prisoners' dock at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Germany

Impact on Jewish population

More than 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust.

Less then 4 million survived