The Holocaust Hitlers Final Solution Hitler and the

The Holocaust Hitler’s Final Solution

Hitler and the Nazis comes to power �promised Germans a better life �appealed to young, unemployed and small businessmen �Chancellor (1933) a one-party dictatorship. �All individual freedoms and rights removed �rely on terror and violence to maintain and increase their power. .

Heinrich Himmler �Head of the SS

Nazi Propaganda and Censorship �To gain support of the German people �Headed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, �control of all forms of media and communication (newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, rallies, art, music, movies and radio). �burned books (unfit) (Einstein and Freud) �Anti-Semitism

The Master Race �“master race” = Aryans (blond, blue-eyed and tall). �Improved humanity by limiting the reproduction of people considered to be “inferior”. �Forced sterilization on Gypsies, handicapped, mentally ill, deaf, blind, African-German children and the Jews. �Teachers began to apply “the principles of racial sciences”.

The Handicapped �Physically and mentally ill targeted. �Viewed as “useless” members of society �Threat to Aryan genetic purity �The T-4 program (euthanasia program) �German doctors aided the Nazis (medical files) �Killed in specially constructed gas chambers. �Children – injections or starvation. �Bodies burned

Hadamar

Jews and anti-Semitism in Europe � 600 000 Jews in Germany. �The largest concentration in Eastern Europe �Contrary to German propaganda and prejudice, not all Jews were extremely wealthy. �Anti-Semitism was prevalent in Europe prior to the Holocaust. �The Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages taught that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s death even though the Romans had crucified Jesus. �blamed for Black Death

Nazi persecution of the Jews �Star of David & identification cards �The Nuremburg Race Laws (1935) �Defined a Jew: Not in religious terms, but in terms of lineage. �Complete segregation (adults and children) �Pogroms �November 9, 1938: Kristallnacht or “the Night of the Broken Glass”. �Joseph Goebbels carefully organized the pogroms. � 1 000 synagogues burned, 7 000 Jewish businesses attacked and dozens of Jews were killed. �Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools and homes looted

Kristallnacht

The Ghettos �Forced to live in marked-off sections of cities (ghettos) �Fenced in barbed-wire or walls /guarded entrances �Life unbearable. �Overcrowded/diseased/filthy/no heat �Nazis deliberately tried to starve the residents of the ghettos. There was no sources of heat. �Thousands died/many suicides.

Concentration Camps �Prison camps or concentration were built by the Nazis to imprison Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, resisters, homosexuals and other “enemies of the state”. �more than 100 across German-occupied Europe by the end of WWII.

The Final Solution �Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people. �The goal = genocide (the deliberate, systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, cultural or political group). �First revealed to non-Nazi leaders at Wannsee Conference (Jan. 1942) �Many forms of murder: gassing, shootings, random acts of violence, disease and starvation.

Einsatzgruppen �Mobile group of SS �Followed German armies into the Soviet Union in June 1941 �Ordered to kill all Jews, communist leaders and Gypsies. �Killed one million Jews. �Shot or used gas vans �psychologically devastating to the killers (ordinary men) �Those who struggled with the murders often used liquor to numb themselves

The Last Jew in Vinnitsa (1942) An Einsatzgruppen D member about to shoot a Jew kneeling at a mass grave in Vinnitsa.

Extermination Camps �The Nazis systematically deported Jews to six extermination camps �In Poland �To decrease psychological burden on the killers. �The most famous death camp was Auschwitz. These camps were �killing centres to achieve Hitler’s goals of genocide

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Death Camps � Arrive by train (packed like cattle) � sorted by the guards: � men from the women and children � the sick from the healthy (overseen by SS doctor) � Infants, young children, pregnant women, the elderly, the handicapped and the sick usually did not survive this initial selection. � Once selected to die: � led to the gas chambers. (Told it was a shower to prevent panic) � Prisoners forced to carry the bodies to a room where all valuables removed � Bodies were burned or buried in mass graves. � Also extermination through work.

Liberation of the Camps �Soviet soldiers first �British, Canadian, American and French troops too �Nazis had tried to empty the camps of surviving prisoners/ evidence of their crimes � Allied soldiers still found thousands of dead �Those alive practically skeletons �Many too weak to digest food (1/2 found alive in Auschwitz died in a few days) �Mixed reactions of survivors � Excitement and guilt

Returning home? �Impossible to return home to a life like it had been before the Holocaust �Jewish communities no longer existed in much of Europe. �Found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others. �Many ended up in displaced persons’ (DP) camps �Waited to be admitted to places like the United States or South Africa. �On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, announced the formation of the State of Israel.

Nuremburg Trials �After the war, some of those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust were brought to trial in Nuremburg, Germany in 1945 and 1946. �Allied judges presided over the hearings of twentytwo major Nazi criminals. Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death. �Hitler did not appear at the Nuremburg Trials because he had committed suicide at the end of the war.