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THE HOLOCAUST

Holocaust

The Holocaust lasted 12 years. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party gained power in Germany, some 9 million Jewish people lived in Europe. By 1945, when Hitler’s regime was defeated, two of every three of those people had been murdered along with anyone else Hitler deemed undesirable.

Hitler’s Nazi Party

Hitler blamed Jews for Germany’s failures

Scapegoat – fully blaming a group for a problem

Created Anti-Semitism propaganda – posters, radio, movie against Jews

The German government issued a firestorm of propaganda speaking against the Jewish population. Jewish individuals faced random inspections and interrogations.

Hitler’s Master Race

Wanted to make Germany racially “pure” - get rid of “bad blood” (Jewish) from society

Wanted to create the Aryan Race – Blond hair, blue eye, strong, tall

Write a summary of the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party

Segregation:Signs alerting of a Jewish curfew and limiting where they can ride on the trolley. Eventually all Jewish people are removed to a walled-off portion of each city called a “ghetto.”

Because Jews were considered enemies of the state, radios, weapons, valuables, and basic civil rights were confiscated at the beginning of the war. All Jewish persons must wear a yellow star on their clothing to identify themselves.

Write a summary of Segregation

Deportation: When the ghettos no longer served their purpose, the Jewish population was deported to concentration camps (part of Hitler’s “Final Solution”). Each person was told they could bring one bag of belongings, but those bags usually remained on the station platform as they were shoved into boxcars (80 people to 1 boxcar).

Any found hiding in bunkers to avoid deportation from the ghettos were shot.

Intimidation and No Escape

Hunted like fugitives, subjected to death marches, even those found harboring or aiding them were sentenced to work camps or execution.

“Work will set you free”

Summary of Deportation process

The selection process Once prisoners

arrived to a concentration camp, there was a “selection” process. They separated men and women/children, split families apart

They performed physical exams

The weak, sick, and old were pushed in one direction

The able bodied were pushed in the other…

Selection: Those that were not selected for immediate death lived on a diet of one mug of black coffee, one bowl of soup and some stale bread. Their clothes, shoes and even their gold teeth and glasses were confiscated. Each received a tattoo on their left arm—they no longer had names, just numbers. Their heads were shaved and the fallen hair was sometimes braided into rope. They slept in barracks, usually four persons to a bunk.

Summarize “selection process”

There were two kinds of camps:

Work Camps for the Healthy and Strong.

Death Camps: Cremation Ovens Containing Remains of Those “Selected” to Die.

Death Camps – mass executions

Carbon monoxide gas is piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but Zyklon-B will later be substituted. Bodies are burned (cremated) in open pits.

Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.

Warehouse of Victim’s Clothes and Shoes

Though many prisoners in the concentration camps froze from lack of proper clothing, after the war, their liberators found storehouses filled with confiscated clothing and shoes.

Camp Commander Stands among His Victims

Bails of Victim’s Hair

The Holocaust 1933-1945Estimated killings of:

6 million Jews 1.8 million Poles (Christian) 250,000-500,000 Gypsies 75,000-250,000 People with Intellectual or

Physical Disabilities 10,000-25,000 Homosexuals 100,000 Communists Additionally, Soviet POWs, Political Prisoners, etc.

were Killed in Nazi-Run Concentration Camp.

Many Jews who sought refuge in the USA were turned away due to the immigration quotas act. In 1943, going beyond the power of his office, President Roosevelt authorized an additional 1000 refugees to be brought to the US and kept at Fort Ontario.

As World War II ends…

Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp. Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing.

Piles of corpses, soon after the liberation of the Mauthausen camp. Austria, after May 5,

1945.— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Summarize Concentration Camps & Discovery of camps

United Nations led Nuremburg Trials

Definition: trials for Nazi leaders for atrocities, particularly the Holocaust.

-Over 200 Nazi leaders were found guilty

-12 were sentenced to death

Nuremburg Trials

Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to

death. Most of the defendants admitted to

the crimes of which they were accused,

although most claimed that they were

simply following the orders of a higher

authority. Those individuals directly involved

in the killing received the most severe

sentences.

Results

Made precedent that soldiers cannot

commit terrible crimes and claim, “I

did it because I was

told to…”

Summarize Nuremburg Trials

Watch this movie

A summary of the Holocaust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULpLkhL-p_o