THE HOLOCAUST

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THE HOLOCAUST
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What is Genocide?

• Genocide is the deliberate and systematic
  destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic,
  racial, religious, or national group.
• According to the United Nations "any of the
  following acts committed with intent to destroy,
  in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
  or religious group, as such killing members of
  the group causing serious bodily or mental harm
  to members of the group deliberately inflicting
  on the group conditions of life, calculated to
  bring about its physical destruction in whole or
  in part imposing measures intended to prevent
  births within the group and forcibly
  transferring children of the group to another
  group."

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8 Stages of Genocide

• Classification
• Symbolization
• Dehumanization
• Organization
• Polarization
• Identification
• Extermination
• Denial

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Other examples of genocide
Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1860 Black War, Australia, 1800s
The Circassian Genocide, Russia, 1800s Native American Trail of Tears, U.S., 1830-1860
Herero and Namaqua Genocide, Namibia, 1904-1907 Armenian Genocide, Turkey, 1915-1923
Stalins regime of terror, USSR, 1924-1953 (including Ukraine) The Rape of Nanking, Manchuria, and Xiangyang, Japan, 1937-1945
Serbian Genocide, Croatia, 1941-1945 Partition of India and Pakistan, India, 1947
Mae Zedong rule, China, 1949-1975 East Timor, Indonesia, 1965 and 1975-1993
Kurdish minority, Iraq, 1965-1975 and 1987-1992 Guatemalan Civil War, Guatemala 1968-1996
Burundi Genocide, Burundi, 1972 Muslim Moro people, Philippines, 1972-1976
Khmer Rouge, Cambodia, 1975-1979 Civil War, Angola, 1975-1995 and 1998-2002
Civil War, El Salvador, 1980-1990 Ikhwan citizens (Sunni), Syria, 1982
Bosnian Genocide, Bosnia Herzegovina, 1992-1995 Burma/Myanmar, 1970s-current
Bangladesh, 1971 Rwandan Genocide, Rwanda, 1994
Darfur Conflict, Sudan, 2003-present
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What is The Holocaust

• The destruction of some 6 million Jews by the
  Nazis and their followers in Europe between the
  years 1933-1945. Other individuals and groups
  were persecuted and suffered grievously during
  this period, but only the Jews were marked for
  complete and utter extinction. The term
  "Holocaust" - literally meaning "a completely
  burned sacrifice" - tends to suggest a
  sacrificial connotation to what occurred.

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Holocaust Vocabulary

• 1. Allies - The nations fighting Nazi Germany,
  Italy, and Japan during World War II primarily
  the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet
  Union.
• 2. Aryan Race - "Aryan" was originally applied to
  people who spoke any Indo-European language. The
  Nazis, however, primarily applied the term to
  people of Northern European racial background.
  Their aim was to avoid what they considered the
  "worst of the German race" and to preserve the
  purity of European blood.
• 3. Auschwitz - Concentration and extermination
  camp in upper Silesia, Poland, 37 miles west of
  Krakow. Established in 1940 as a concentration
  camp, it became an extermination camp in early
  1942. Eventually, it consisted of three sections
  Auschwitz I, the main camp Auschwitz II
  (Birkenau), an extermination camp Auschwitz III
  (Monowitz), the I.G. Farben labor camp, also
  known as Buna. In addition, Auschwitz had
  numerous sub-camps.

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Holocaust Vocabulary Contd

• 4. Axis - the Axis powers originally included
  Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan who signed a pact
  in Berlin on September 27, 1940. They were later
  joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and
  Slovakia.
• 5. commandant - a commanding officer of a
  military organization
• 6. concentration camps - Immediately upon their
  assumption of power on January 30, 1933, the
  Nazis established concentration camps for the
  imprisonment of all "enemies" of their regime
  actual and potential political opponents (e.g.
  communists, socialists, monarchists), Jehovah's
  Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and other
  "asocials." Beginning in 1938, Jews were targeted
  for internment solely because they were Jews.
  Before then, only Jews who fit one of the earlier
  categories were interned in camps. The first
  three concentration camps established were Dachau
  (near Munich), Buchenwald (near Weimar) and
  Sachsenhausen (near Berlin).

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Holocaust Vocabulary Contd

• 7. Final Solution - The cover name for the plan
  to destroy the Jews of Europe - the "Final
  Solution of the Jewish Question." Beginning in
  December 1941, Jews were rounded up and sent to
  extermination camps in the East. The program was
  deceptively disguised as "resettlement in the
  East."
• 8. ghetto - The Nazis revived the medieval ghetto
  in creating their compulsory "Jewish Quarter"
  (Wohnbezirk). The ghetto was a section of a city
  where all Jews from the surrounding areas were
  forced to reside. Surrounded by barbed wire or
  walls, the ghettos were often sealed so that
  people were prevented from leaving or entering.
  Established mostly in Eastern Europe (e.g. Lodz,
  Warsaw, Vilna, Riga, Minsk), the ghettos were
  characterized by overcrowding, starvation and
  forced labor. All were eventually destroyed as
  the Jews were deported to death camps.

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Holocaust Vocabulary Contd

• 9. Mein Kampf (My Struggle) - This
  autobiographical book (My Struggle) by Hitler was
  written while he was imprisoned in the Landsberg
  fortress after the "Beer-Hall Putsch" in 1923. In
  this book, Hitler propounds his ideas, beliefs,
  and plans for the future of Germany. Everything,
  including his foreign policy, is permeated by his
  "racial ideology." The Germans, belonging to the
  "superior" Aryan race, have a right to "living
  space" (Lebensraum) in the East, which is
  inhabited by the "inferior" Slavs. Throughout, he
  accuses Jews of being the source of all evil.
• 10. Nuremberg Laws - Two anti-Jewish statutes
  enacted September 1935 during the Nazi party's
  national convention in Nuremberg, taking away the
  Jews' civil rights. The first, the Reich
  Citizenship Law, deprived German Jews of their
  citizenship and all pertinent, related rights.
  The second, the Law for the Protection of German
  Blood and Honor, outlawed marriages of Jews and
  non-Jews, forbade Jews from employing German
  females of childbearing age, and prohibited Jews
  from displaying the German flag. Many additional
  regulations were attached to the two main
  statutes, which provided the basis for removing
  Jews from all spheres of German political,
  social, and economic life. The Nuremberg Laws
  carefully established definitions of Jewishness
  based on bloodlines. Thus, many Germans of mixed
  ancestry, called "Mischlinge," faced antisemitic
  discrimination if they had a Jewish grandparent.

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Holocaust Vocabulary Contd

• 11. Resistance - the "underground" organizations
  working to help the Jews against Hitler/Nazi army
• 12. SS - Abbreviation usually written with two
  lightning symbols for Schutzstaffel (Defense
  Protective Units). Originally organized as
  Hitler's personal bodyguard, the SS was
  transformed into a giant organization by Heinrich
  Himmler. Although various SS units fought on the
  battlefield, the organization is best known for
  carrying out the destruction of European Jewry.

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HOLOCAUST STATISTICS
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at
over 9 million. By 1945, close to 2 out of every
3 European Jews had been killed as part of the
Final Solution.
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Pre-War

• Jews were living in every country in Europe
  before the Nazis came into power in 1933
• Approximately 9 million Jews
• Poland and the Soviet Union had the largest
  populations
• Jews could be found in all walks of life
  farmers, factory workers, business people,
  doctors, teachers, and craftsmen

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Antisemitism

• Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination for
  over 2,000 years.
• Political leaders who used antisemitism as a tool
  relied on the ideas of racial science to portray
  Jews as a race instead of a religion.
• Nazi teachers began to apply the principles of
  racial science by measuring skull size and nose
  length and recording students eye color and hair
  to determine whether students belonged the the
  Aryan race.

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Antisemitism

• FYI Today, most scholars regard race as a
  meaningless scientific concept human beings,
  regardless of their so-called race, are more
  genetically alike than different. Genetic
  differences within races are greater than those
  between the races.

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Weimar Republic

• After Germany lost World War I, a new government
  formed and became the Weimar Republic.
• Many Germans were upset not only that they had
  lost the war but also that they had to repay
  (make reparations) to all of the countries that
  they had damaged in the war.

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Weimar Republic

• The total bill that the Germans had to pay was
  equivalent to nearly 70 billion.
• The German army was limited in size.
• Extremists blamed Jews for Germanys defeat in
  WWI and blamed the German Foreign Minister (a
  Jew) for his role in reaching a settlement with
  the Allies.

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Weimar Republic

• The German mark became worth less than the paper
  it was printed onhyperinflation occurred.
• Nearly 6 million Germans were unemployed.

A ten million mark Reichsbanknote paper
currency that was issued by the German national
bank during the height of the inflation in 1923.
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Totalitarian State

• Totalitarianism is the total control of a country
  in the governments hands
• It subjugates individual rights.
• It demonstrates a policy of aggression.

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Totalitarian State

• In a totalitarian state, paranoia and fear
  dominate.
• The government maintains total control over the
  culture.
• The government is capable of indiscriminate
  killing.
• During this time in Germany, the Nazis passed
  laws which restricted the rights of Jews
  including the Nuremberg Laws.

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1934

• Jews are not allowed to have national health
  insurance
• the SS (Schutzstaffel) is formed
• Hitler becomes Der Fuherer and receives a 90
  approval rating from the people

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Totalitarian State

• The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German
  citizenship. They were prohibited from marrying
  or having sexual relations with persons of
  German or related blood.

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Totalitarian State
Jews, like all other German citizens, were
required to carry identity cards, but their cards
were stamped with a red J. This allowed police
to easily identify them.
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Persecution

• The Nazi plan for dealing with the Jewish
• Question evolved in three steps
• 1. Expulsion Get them out of Germany
• 2. Containment Put them all together in one
  place namely ghettos
• 3. Final Solution annihilation

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Persecution

• Nazis targeted other individuals and groups in
  addition to the Jews

• Gypsies (Sinti and Roma)
• Homosexual men
• Jehovahs Witness
• Handicapped Germans
• Poles
• Political dissidents

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U.S. and World Response

• Some American congressmen proposed the
  Wagner-Rogers Bill, which offered to let 20,000
  endangered Jewish refugee children into the
  country, but the bill was not supported in the
  Senate.
• Antisemitic attitudes played a role in the
  failure to help refugees.

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U.S. and World Response

• The SS St. Louis, carrying refugees with Cuban
  visas, were denied admittance both in Cuba and in
  Florida. After being turned back to Europe, most
  of the passengers perished in the Holocaust.

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Final Solution

• The Nazis aimed to control the Jewish population
  by forcing them to live in areas that were
  designated for Jews only, called ghettos.
• Ghettos were established across all of occupied
  Europe, especially in areas where there was
  already a large Jewish population.

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Final Solution

• Many ghettos were closed by barbed wire or walls
  and were guarded by SS or local police
• Life in the ghettos was hard food was rationed
  several families often shared a small space
  disease spread rapidly heating, ventilation, and
  sanitation were limited.
• Many children were orphaned in the ghettos.

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Final Solution
Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing squads made up
of Nazi (SS) units and police. They killed Jews
in mass shooting actions throughout eastern
Poland and the western Soviet Union
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Final Solution

• On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi
  officials met at the Wannsee Conference to learn
  about how the Jewish Question would be solved.
• The Final Solution was outlined by Reinhard
  Heydrich who detailed the plan to establish death
  camps with gas chambers.

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Final Solution

• Death camps were the means the Nazis used to
  achieve the final solution.
• There were six death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau,
  Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, and
  Belzec.
• Each used gas chambers to murder the Jews. At
  Auschwitz prisoners were told the gas chambers
  were showers.

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Final Solution

• Most of the gas chambers used carbon monoxide
  from diesel engines.
• In Auschwitz and Majdanek Zyklon B pellets,
  which were a highly poisonous insecticide,
  supplied the gas.
• After the gassings, prisoners removed hair, gold
  teeth and fillings from the Jews before the
  bodies were burned in the crematoria or buried in
  mass graves.

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Final Solution
There were many concentration and labor camps
where many people died from exposure, lack of
food, extreme working conditions, torture, and
executions.
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Resistance

• Despite the high risk, some individuals attempted
  to resist Nazism.
• The White Rose movement protested Nazism,
  though not Jewish policy, in Germany.

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Resistance

• The White Rose movement was founded in June 1942
  by Hans Scholl, 24-year-old medical student, his
  22-year-old sister Sophie, and 24-year-old
  Christoph Probst.
• The White Rose stood for purity and innocence in
  the face of evil.
• In February 1943, Hans and Sophie were caught
  distributing leaflets and were arrested.
• They were executed with Christoph 4 days later.

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Resistance

• Other famous acts of resistance include
• the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Uprising)
• Sobibor escape (Escape from Sobibor)
• Sonderkommando blowing up Crematorium IV at
  Birkenau (The Grey Zone)
• Jewish partisans who escaped to fight in the
  forests.

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Rescue

• In Denmark 7,220 of the 8,000 Jews were saved by
  ferrying them to neutral Sweden.
• The Danes proved that widespread support for Jews
  could save lives.

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Rescue
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg worked in
Hungary to protect thousands of Jews by
distributing protective Swedish (a neutral
country) passports.
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Aftermath

• Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate camp
  prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Maidanek in
  Poland.
• British, Canadian, American, and French troops
  also liberated camp prisoners.
• Troops were shocked at what they saw.

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THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ
ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS
TEETH WITH GOLD
PILES OF GLASSES
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MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

• Sterilization of men and women
• endurance of pain to high and low temperatures
  and pressure
• experiments on twins to increase number of
  multiple births to Aryan women
• injections of phenol to kill patients
• Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children together to
  make Siamese twins

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Aftermath

• Most prisoners were emaciated to the point of
  being skeletal.
• Many camps had dead bodies lying in piles like
  cordwood.
• Many prisoners died even after liberation.

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Aftermath

• Many of the camp prisoners had nowhere to go, so
  they became displaced persons (DPs).
• These survivors stayed in DP camps in Germany,
  which were organized and run by the Allies.
• Initially, the conditions were often very poor in
  the DP camps.

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Aftermath

• Jewish displaced persons, eager to leave Europe,
  pushed for the founding of a Jewish state in
  British-controlled Palestine.
• U.S. President Harry Truman issued an executive
  order allowing Jewish refugees to enter the
  United States without normal immigration
  restrictions.

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Aftermath

• The Nuremberg Trials brought some of those
  responsible for the atrocities of the war to
  justice.
• There were 22 Nazi criminals tried by the Allies
  in the International Military Tribunal.
• Twelve subsequent trials followed as well as
  national trials throughout formerly occupied
  Europe.

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Aftermath

• The International Military Tribunal took place in
  Nuremberg, Germany in 1945 and 1946.
• 12 prominent Nazis were sentenced to death.
• Most claimed that they were only following
  orders, which was judged to be an invalid defense.

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Aftermath
Why study the Holocaust?
Former prisoners of the "little camp" in
Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in
which they slept three to a "bed." Elie Wiesel is
pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from
the left, next to the vertical beam.
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Camp Totals
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STATISTICS BY COUNTRY
Jewish population before, Jewish population after
Holocaust