The Holocaust

1. Why did the Holocaust occur? A. Genocide: The systematic and purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group ► B. Holocaust- the mass slaughter of civilians in Germany, especially Jews ► Holocaust = (destruction by fire)

2. Elements leading to the Holocaust A. Totalitarianism combined with nationalism B. History of anti-Semitism ► Anti -Semitism This is the term given to political, social and economic agitation against Jews. In simple terms it means ‘Hatred of Jews

C. Hitler’s belief in the master race D. Final solution - Extermination camps, gas chambers

3. Kristallnacht – “Night of Broken Glass” A. Is a defining example of when the German hatred of Jews went to another level that would lead to the Holocaust. ► A young Jew hears of his father being deported out of Germany, so he shoots a German employee ► Starts a German Massacre of his Jewish Neighborhood.

Kristallnacht

Jews arrested during Kristallnacht

Berlin after Kristallnacht

► Totalitarianism and Nationalism in Germany

For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ -killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example. In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge. In Jews were hanged in the Tower of London. This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century, especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population was very large. After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed. Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business. Jews were a SCAPEGOAT

1935- Nuremberg Race Laws

Anti-Semitism of Nuremburg laws

Anti-Semitism

Jews in School

► Jewish Child Starving in the Street of a Ghetto Beginning of Solution - Ghettos

Jews being forced to leave ghettos

Jews Being forced to leave

Deportation of Jews

Phase 1 = Shooting ► Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated ► They were taken to the woods and were shot one by one ► their bodies were buried in mass graves

Phase 2 = Gas Vans ► Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans ► The vans were equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van ► However, problems with this 700,000 Jews killed in Vans

Phase 3 = The Camps ► Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final Solution ► there were two different types of camps: ► CONCENTRATION CAMPS ► EXTERMINATION CAMPS ► Jews from all over occupied Europe were to be brought here.

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.

Harrassment

Jew being harassed

Extermination Camp

Liberation of Death Camps

Extermination Camps

E. Between 1939 and 1945 six million Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of others, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled and the mentally ill.

Portrait of two-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child who was among the 33,771 persons shot by the SS during the mass executions at Babi Yar, September, 1941.

Nazis sift through a huge pile of clothes left by victims of the massacre. Two year old Mani Halef’s clothes are somewhere amongst these.

Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September of In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces.

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

Burning Ovens

Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

HOLOCAUST STATISTICS

4. Examples of other genocides A) Armenians by leaders of the Ottoman Empire

► ► B) Peasants, government and military leaders, and members of the elite in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin

C) The educated, artists, technicians, former government officials, monks, and minorities by Pol Pot in Cambodia D) Tutsi minority by Hutu in Rwanda

► Tutsi Minority in Rwanda