THE HOLOCAUST The Destruction of the European Jews,

DEFINING THE HOLOCAUST Mass murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews Holocaust: sacrificial offering burnt whole before the Lord Sho’ah: catastrophe Genocide: total physical annihilation –Gypsies, mentally and physically handicapped, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet citizens, political prisoners, religious dissenters, homosexuals

ROOTS History of prejudice in Christianity – claimed to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the sole recipient of God’s Covenant Pogroms, discriminatory laws, expulsions Eugenics: racial pseudo-science

HOW THE FINAL SOLUTION CAME ABOUT – 1930s Excluding the racially inferior Creating the Gestapo The first concentration camps Nuremberg Laws – Sept 1935 Crystal Night Pogrom – Nov Evian Conference – July 1938

WAR Euthanasia (T4) Program Nazi racial policies in Poland Yellow badge in the West Attack on the USSR & mobile killing squads – “Einsatsgruppen” Volunteers – “Hiwi” – to help guard labor and extermination camps

FINAL SOLUTION Wannsee Conference – Jan 1942 – authorized systematic deportation of 11,000,000 Jews

CAMPS Forced Labor camps Extermination camps: 4 of 6 devoted exclusively to mass murder Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka Extermination through work: Majdanek, Auschwitz

INTERPRETATIONS Intentionalists: pinpointing Hitler’s fixation Functionalists: No premeditated plan -- A “twisted road” to Auschwitz Synthesizers: Before and after 1941

WHO WERE THE PERPETRATORS? SS and Police, German Army, German physicians, German civil servants, Non- German volunteers (Hiwis), Non- German Govt. officials Explanations for their behavior: Indoctrination, superior orders, careerism, peer pressure, self- preservation

HOW DID THE VICTIMS TRY TO SURVIVE? Accomodation – obeying the law Armed resistance Evasion Surviving camps

BYSTANDERS Bystanders: apathy and indifference Rescuers: family background that emphasized justice and non-violent solutions. Less concerned about race, class, and nation

THE ALLIED POWERS Bombing? Negotiations? Pressure through Vatican and satellites? Publicized mass-murder to influence bystanders? Waited too long to establish WRB? Jewish committees of the free world? The Neutrals?

THE LASTING EFFECTS Notion of linear progress and Reason shattered Studying the Holocaust to avoid other genocides The Shoah project – taped interviews “Blockbuster” interpretations of the Holocaust: Schindler’s List – saving lives Primo Levi’s If this is a Man? – Survival at Auschwitz Negationism