& N A Z I A T R O C I T I E S

 Not counting military related deaths, 11 million people were murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945  The Nazis targeted Jews, Foreign Workers, Homosexuals, the Disabled, Communists, Gypsies, Poles and Russian P.O.W.s  The Holocaust is a specific term to describe the treatment of Jewish people during this period  Approximately 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis  The term Holocaust means “an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire)” or “A religious animal sacrifice that is completely consumed by fire.”

 Undesirables were alienated by the Nazis when they assumed power  They were physically and mentally abused, fired from their jobs, harassed and imprisoned in concentration camps  In one case, Jewish people were rounded up and forced to cut the grass of a soccer field with their teeth  Undesirables were forced to wear badges to distinguish them from good “Aryans”  Euthanasia program: Nazi doctors secretly murdered disabled babies and children

 In 1935, the Nazis passed a series of laws which denied Jews: 1. Citizenship 2. Jobs (banking, Acting, the arts, Politics, Law) 3. Marriage with Germans

 1938: After the murder of a Nazi official in France, Hitler’s S.A. Goes on a rampage in Germany  One night orgy of destruction and mayhem  Destruction of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues  Jews beaten and murdered in the streets  Kristallnacht literally means “The Night of Broken Glass”

 The Jews were then removed from their homes and forced into ghettos (mostly in Poland)  Their property was stolen  Were forced into “fenced in” neighborhoods  Extremely crowded, unsanitary, little food and often people were taken to be used as slave laborer in nearby factories  German soldiers would often tour the ghettos on their way to the Front – as if it was a zoo – they shot people randomly, took pictures, broke up funerals etc.

 After the invasion of Poland, a special S.S. unit was sent in to eliminate “undesirables”  They went from town to town and searched for Jews, Gypsies, Communists and intellectuals  They brought them to the edge of town and forced them to dig a large pit  Afterwards, the crowd would be shot and buried  This continued with the invasion of the USSR  In total, the Einsatzgruppen killed almost 2 million people

 Although the Einsatzgruppen was effective, it was time consuming, messy and inefficient  In 1942 at the “Wansee conference” it was decided that special camps were to be built in order to offer the “Final Solution” to the Jewish Question  The camps allowed the Nazis to fully exploit the Jews and murder them in the most efficient way possible