The Holocaust: An Overview

Antisemitism Hostility toward Jews as an ethnic or religious group, often accompanied by social, economic and political discrimination.

Propaganda The deliberate spreading of ideas or information, true or untrue, with the purpose of manipulating people to gain support for a cause.

Nazi Propaganda

1942 In January 1942, SS  official Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting of Nazi government officials to present the Final Solution. At this meeting, known as the Wannsee Conference , the Nazi officials agreed to SS plans for the transport and destruction of all 11 million Jews of Europe.

View of the entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I) View of the entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). The gate bears the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free). 

A warehouse full of shoes and clothing confiscated from the prisoners and deportees gassed upon their arrival. 

Holocaust Destruction, or murder on a mass scale.

Jews from Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands stand for roll call in the Buchenwald concentration camp soon after their arrival on February 28, 1941

Prejudice Injury resulting from some judgment of another in disregard of one's rights.

Bones of anti-Nazi German women are visible in the crematoria in the concentration camp at Weimar, Germany. April 14, 1945. 

A Crate Full of Rings Confiscated from Prisoners in Buchenwald

Extermination The Germans hid their true plans from citizens and inhabitants of the ghettos by claiming that Jews were being resettled in the East. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send reassuring postcards back to the ghettos. Thus did millions of Jews go unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance.

The total figure for the Jewish genocide, including shootings and the camps, was between 5.2 and 5.8 million, roughly half of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war.

Slave laborers in Buchenwald are liberated by the American Army in April, 1945. They survived in spite of miserable conditions: overcrowding, lack of food, hard labor, and psychological torture. Eli Weisel appears as the last full face on the second bunk from the bottom.

Throughout the Holocaust, victims received help from rescuers Throughout the Holocaust, victims received help from rescuers. Courageous citizens were able to hide and protect thousands of Jews and other victims of oppression until the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the death camps by the Allied forces.

Holocaust Denial The claim that the genocide of the Jews during World War II did not happen.

Why do we learn about horrific events like the Holocaust?

How could one survive this?

How do we prevent this Evil from ever happening again?

How could an entire nation be deceived by Hitler and his Nazi Germany?

References A Teacher's Guide to the HolocaustFlorida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida © 2005.Accessed on: http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/RESOURCE/GALLERY/L1945B.HTM#76788