The Holocaust 1933 1945 What was the Holocaust

The Holocaust 1933 -1945

What was the Holocaust? What does that word mean? “The state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945…Jews were the primary victims but other groups were targeted. ”

Germans called it the “Final Solution. ”

Other groups included: • Gypsies • the Handicapped/Mentally Ill • Poles (Polish people for various reasons) • Homosexuals • Jehovah’s Witnesses • Soviet Prisoners of War • Political dissidents (people who didn’t agree with Hitler)

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out; Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out; Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me. "

The Jewish Population in Europe, 1939

In September 1935, Hitler issued the “Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” These laws were the first signs of Hitler’s plan to carry out his Master Race Theory.

This law included the following provisions: • No mixed marriages between Jew and German. • Jews could not employ a German woman, under the age of 45, in their home. • Jews are not allowed to fly the Reich or National flag nor wear the German colors

This was only the beginning…

Soon the exclusion of Jews could be seen everywhere… A motorcyclist sees a sign on the outskirts of a village which reads “Jews not welcome here. ”

Stores put up anti-Jewish signs to show their support of the Jewish Boycott!

Stores owned by Jews were marked with the Star of David… increasing segregation.

KRISTALLNACHT: “The Night of Broken Glass” *November 9 -10, 1938* A nation-wide program where the Nazis burned synagogues, looted Jewish homes & businesses, arrested approximately 30, 000 Jewish men, and killed at least 91 people.

According to another of Hitler’s laws, Jews were forced to mark themselves with a Star of David symbol at all times.

BADGES OF HATE

In many cities that had large Jewish populations, Hitler would first organize the Jewish people into a GHETTO. This was a restricted section of town where all of the Jews were forced to move and live. This section was then walled in. There was never enough food, jobs, or housing. Sanitation was disgusting and disease wide spread.

The most famous of these ghettos was the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.

Eventually, Hitler forcibly moved the ghetto populations to labor and extermination camps…

THE JOURNEY TO DEATH… • The people were packed in wooden train crates. • There was little air and people died in route to the camps. • They did not know where they were going, but most had heard the rumors. • They would either be taken to a camp or taken out of town and shot.

Hitler’s Helpers The Einsatzgruppen was the name given to Hitler’s mobile “killing squads. ” Their job was to hunt down and kill Jews and other

STOP HERE Video clips of life in Warsaw Ghetto and departure to camps from The Pianist.

If the people survived the train trip and their destination was in fact a camp—usually a labor or extermination camp… they were turned over to the SS guards at the camp upon arrival.

The sign above the entrance to the camp reads “Work Makes One Free”

Major Nazi Labor/Death Camps • Major Killing centers/death camps: – Sobibor, Poland – Belzec, Poland – Treblinka, Poland – Auschwitz, Poland – Chelmno, Poland – Majkanek, Poland

LIFE INSIDE THE CAMPS….

Daily Roll Call

Forced labor

Crowded Sleeping Barracks

Medical Experimentation • Prisoners were also used for brutal medical experimentation. • Example: victims were injected with deadly germs in order to study the effect of the disease on different groups of people. • Experiments were conducted on children, twins, the mentally and physically disabled, etc.

Dr. Josef Mengele was the most famous of these “doctors. ” Called the “Angel of Death”

As the War went on and Germany began to lose…Hitler pushed for the complete extermination of all prisoners in the camps. Guards worked 24 hours a day trying to rid the world of their “enemy” prisoners and to be sure no evidence of their acts survived. Gassing prisoners became the preferred method of execution.

Gassing was easier on the guards and it saved ammunition. Prisoners were told to undress and led into the “shower” chambers.

Then, the bodies would be piled and eventually burned. Crematoriums burned all day and night.

This is all that would remain…shoes, clothes

At Auschwitz they found more than 7 tons of human hair…

The Death Marches • As the Allies neared, the camps were evacuated. • SS guards began to take the prisoners on death marches to Auschwitz. • The marches lasted months through the winter snow into the Spring of 1945. • The prisoners were given little food, only wore the clothes on their back when leaving the camp, and lived with the constant threat of execution.

The Allies moved further into the occupied territories and eventually into Germany… There, they found the remaining camps, the death marchers, the survivors, and the remnants of this atrocity. The Soviets liberated the first camp in 1944.

The Allied soldiers were so disgusted with what they found that they often made civilians from the neighboring towns tour the camps to bear witness to what they had lived by and done NOTHING about! The U. S. State Department had known of the actions of the Nazis since 1942 (perhaps earlier).

Gen. Eisenhower inspecting camps

Some 30 million Europeans, soldiers and civilians, were casualties of WW II. Among these dead were some 6 million Jews, victims of the Holocaust, along with millions of Soviet prisoners of war, hundreds of thousands of Roma (Gypsies), Poles, and disabled people, thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and others…

Genocide is the term given to the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. The Holocaust was exactly that… And genocide continues today….

MODERN DAY GENOCIDE: • • • Bangladesh (1971) Burundi (1972) East Timor (1975 -1979: 1/3 of population) Cambodia (1975 -1979: 1 million plus) Guatemala (1981 -1983) Iraq (1987 -1988) Bosnia (1992 -1995) Rwanda (1994) Sudan (Darfur) (present day)

“Don’t hate anybody. Just don’t hate anybody. Look at what happened from the hatred. Because somebody has a different religion or a different race, you shouldn’t look at that. You should look at the person, the human being, what is inside. ” --Share Braun, a Survivor