Holocaust

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Holocaust

• By Timothy Hele, Alex Hayward and Michael Every

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What It Means
The word holocaust, in Greek means complete
destruction by fire. However, it usually applies
to the period during the late 1930s and early
1940s during which 6,000,000 of Hitlers enemies
were brutally exterminated. They were
prominently Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals,
communists, journalists, Jehovahs witnesses,
handicapped people or anyone else who Hitler
disliked or who didnt appease his Aryan ideals.
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Hitlers Rise to Power
After the Great War, Germany was forced to sign
the Treaty of Versailles, depriving it of land,
population and resources. The German economy
crashed and its people fell into poverty and
ruin. The Government tried to make more money by
printing more banknotes but this lead to
hyperinflation and hence money became worthless.
A lady burning money as it was worth more as fuel
because of hyperinfla-tion
500,000 deutschmark note
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Out of these ashes rose a leader who claimed he
could solve all of Germanys problems by blaming
the past problems on non-Aryan people but mainly
the Jews. Germany would have to cleanse itself
from these enemies and then it would become the
great country it once was. In early 1933 Hitler
became the Chancellor of Germany, answerable only
to President Hindenburg. He started reclaiming
all that Germany had lost through the Treaty of
Versailles and won much support.
Adolf Hitler wearing Nazi uniform
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Nazi Regime
Few dared criticise Hitler, so when President
Hindenburg died in 1934, he declared himself as
absolute leader. He set up secret police, the
Gestapo, one of Hitlers ministers, Goebbels,
used propaganda to persuade the population that
Jews were enemies of the state. Hitler gave
people jobs and Germany appeared to recover.
Anti-Semitism was ingrained into school children,
producing a new generation of Nazi supporters.
Nazi flag with Swastika in the centre
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Kristallnacht
In 1935, new Nuremberg laws were passed,
depriving Jews of many of their rights. On 9th
November 1938 anti-Jewish riots were initiated
over Germany and what followed was called Night
of the broken glass or Kristallnacht. 20,000
Jews were taken to concentration camps,
Synagogues were burned and many Jews emigrated.
Jewish shop the morning after Kristallnacht
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World War II
Hitler had begun extending Germany since 1935 but
in 1939 Britain and France declared war on
Germany. Hitlers armies swept through the Low
Countries Poland, Yugoslavia, Norway and France,
bringing with it prisoners of war and plenty of
people for the newly built concentration camps in
Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Map of the progressions of World War II
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Holocaust Begins
After the war had started the mass killings began
in earnest. Many Jews in Poland and Russia were
transported hundreds of miles in squalid
conditions to Concentrations camps over Europe.
Jews were now humiliated by people in the street
and forced to wear yellow armbands. They had to
carry identity cards and were not allowed
professional jobs or work with Aryans.
Jews wearing yellow armbands and being tormented.
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Ghettos
Jews were not only segregated but also isolated.
They had to live in Ghettos, in the poorest, most
dilapidated parts of cities. Overcrowding and
disease were rife, with little sanitation, food
or education. However, some Jews tried to
continue as normal, running schools, printing
newspapers and holding concerts.
A Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw
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Concentration Extermination Camps
The first Concentration camps were in Germany,
like Dachau which I have already mentioned.
Nevertheless, when Eastern Europe was invaded,
many camps were built there, away from the masses
and where genocide could begin undisturbed. On
arrival, prisoners were stripped of their
possessions, identity and clothes, given uniforms
and a number was tattooed on their arm.
Entrance to Dachau.
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Prisoners would be shot or tortured for the
slightest misdemeanour or brutally used as
animals in repugnant medical experiments.
Sometimes they were told the only right they had
was to die. In extermination camps, those
considered unfit to work as slave labour (women,
children, sick and elderly) were gassed with
Zyklon-B, a crystalline form of Hydrochloric acid.
Barbed wire, electric fence guarded by the gunmen
in watch tower.
Shows where the pistol range used to be as Dachau
is now a memorial.
The two original furnaces where bodies were taken
after being gassed.
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Einsatzgruppen
In Eastern Europe, not only were there
Concentration and Extermination camps but also a
groups of Nazis who would round up all the Jews
and separate them into those who could work and
those who were to die immediately. Those who
could work were transported in cattle trucks for
days on end and used as slave labour. Those who
couldnt work were taken by death squads, called
Einsatzgruppen (part of the SS) into the woods
and shot. Sometimes they would line Jews up
along a riverbank and use them as target
practice.
SS promotion poster it says you can join at the
age of 17.
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Resistance Helpers
The Nazis final solution (the extermination of
all Jews) did not always go smoothly. In Sobibor
death camp, the Jews revolted, killing guards and
freeing 600 of their own. There were uprisings
in the Ghettoes, such as Bialystock in Poland,
where 40,000 Jews died but most famously in
Warsaw, April 1943, where the Jews held the Nazis
back for some weeks as the guards tried to round
up all the inhabitants and send them to the
concentration camps.
Oscar Schindlers factory today.
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There were Jewish partisan fighters and many
others who tried to halt the deaths. Oskar
Schindler built a factory for Jewish workers so
they wouldnt be killed and King Christian X of
Denmark did everything he could to stop Danish
Jews being executed, including sending
deputations to death camps and smuggling them
into neutral Sweden during the night. Yet, there
are many unsung heroes.
Oskar Schindler (right) A recent movie made
about Schindlers help during the Holocaust
Schindlers List (left)
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The Liberation
As the allies advanced, the German army realised
they would be unable to complete the Final
Solution. Instead there were death marches,
marching the few survivors from one camp to
another. Even when the Allies liberated the
camps, those who were left were often too weak
and malnourished to pull through, many died. The
survivors were displaced and were frequently
refused back into their own homes.
Dachau liberation.
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The Trials
In 1945, 22 Nazi leaders were put on trial in
Nuremberg for war crimes. This was the first
time someones guilt was gauged on their
individual responsibility, 19 were found guilty
and hanged, from evidence they had compiled
themselves. However, it didnt stop there and
those who had fled, like Eichmann, were
eventually captured and tried for their crimes.
The Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hess, was
hanged on gallows erected just outside the
concentration camp in which he killed over a
million.
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Location of concentration and death camps all
over Europe.
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Lessons
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
created in 1948, entitling all human beings to
minimum rights, such as freedom from death,
slavery and torture. However, Genocide didnt
stop there. Since the Declaration of Human
Rights genocide has been committed in Cambodia
and Pol Pot or Rwanda where a million Hutus and
Tutsis were murdered and Bosnia
A memorial for the holocaust.
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A memorial at Auschwitz
One of many memorials at Dachau
Spires of Harrisburg Holocaust Memorial