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The Holocaust A History and Portrait

The beginning . . .

World War I Central Powers vs. Allied Powers 1914-1917 (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) vs. (France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, & the United States) Central Powers Allied Powers

Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey Allied Powers: France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, & United States

November 1918 The Allied Powers defeat Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey Germany is in ruins. Its economy and political system are destabilized, several thousand German soldiers are dead, and millions of German citizens are homeless, unemployed, and starving.

Resurrecting from the Ruins Germans. . . humiliated, starving, homeless, and desperate in the wake of WWI . . . find hope in the words and leadership of one man.

Adolf Hitler Powered by his charisma and ambition, Hitler vowed to rejuvenate Germany’s economy and restore Germany to a position of world leadership. He was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933. By 1934 he became a dictator. Hitler and his Nazi regime ruled over Germany with ABSOLUTE power.

Hitler’s Plan Step #1: Expand Germany’s political power by invading neighboring nations.

1936: Hitler invades the Rhineland. 1938: Hitler invades Austria and Czechoslovakia 1939: Hitler invades Poland

Germany Expands Its Power

Hitler’s Plan Step #2: Remove several million “undesirables” from Germany and the surrounding areas. Hitler believed that the Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, and other groups of “undesirables” were responsible for Germany’s hardships.

“Removal” Jews were identified and forced to leave their homes. They were sent to the ghettos located within the city. Ghettos: fenced-in communities where residents were given little food and medicine and were forced to live in crowded spaces. Several thousand Jews did not survive the ghettos. They died from starvation and disease.

By 1939 the ghettos were overcrowded and the Nazis no longer had room to house the “undesirables.” The Nazi Regime needed to implement a new plan for “removing” the Jews and other groups from Germany. The Solution . . .

DEATH CAMPS

Jews who had been living in the Ghettos were forced to board freight cars.

When the freight cars arrived at the Death Camps, the Jews were stripped of their belongings . . .

Their shoes . . .

Their glasses . . .

. . . and their jewelry .

They were divided into two groups: Group #1: Prisoners who were old enough and healthy enough to work. Group #2: Prisoners who were too young, too old, or too weak to work.

Group #1 was given prison uniforms and trained to work as forced laborers in German factories and mines.

Group #2 was stripped of their clothing . . .

. . . shaved . . . Bales of hair cut from female prisoners, discovered at Auschwitz following its liberation in January 1945.

. . . and herded into a gas chamber.

During the early years, SS guards buried the dead bodies in mass graves.

However, as the number of bodies increased, the guards ran out of room to bury the dead . . .

The SS guards decided to cremate the bodies to conserve space.

Survivors of the Holocaust oftentimes talked about the horrible stench of death that permeated the air throughout the camps.

Liberation! In 1944, the Allied forces (Soviet Union, Great Britain, & United States) forced Germany to retreat from its occupied territories. As British and American troops advanced, they discovered several Nazi death camps. They were horrified by their discovery . . .

Thousands of starving prisoners . . .

A storehouse filled with 800,000 shoes . . .

…and gas chambers equipped to kill up to 250 people at once.

Historians estimate that 5,370,000 people died at Nazi Death Camps located throughout Europe. Add to this total the millions of Jews and other “undesirables” who died before they even arrived at the death camps.