2. Nazi Germany The Holocaust

3. Hitler and Anti-Semitism
Europe had a long history of anti-Semitism
Hitler tapped into this - the Jews became the scapegoats for Germany’s problems
Jewishness and Communism became connected in the minds of many Germans
Despite this many Jews saw themselves as proud Germans

4. Policy Hitler’s anti-semitism was virulent, but also stealthy
1933 Nuremberg Laws were restrictive and made Jews “non-citizens”, but few foresaw the barbarity that was to take place between 1942 and 1945

5. The Holocaust
Adolf Hitler's persecution of the Jews, in Germany, began a month after he became chancellor on Jan. 30, A strident anti-Semitism had always been part of his party platform. Jewish businesses were boycotted and vandalized. Jews were driven from their jobs in government and universities. By the Nuremberg laws of 1935 they lost their citizenship and were forbidden to intermarry with other Germans. They became non-persons in their own country with no claim to rights of any kind. Many fled to other European nations or to the United States. Most, however, stayed behind, convinced that as fully integrated German citizens they were safe. In so doing they failed to understand the seriousness of their predicament. As a result of the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass”-- Nov , 1938), practically every synagogue (Jewish temple) in Germany was destroyed, along with other Jewish institutions. Thereafter, thousands of Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps, and the major part of German Jewish wealth was confiscated by huge punitive fines and other exactions. By the time that WW II had broken out, in 1939, Jews were no longer citizens, could attend no public schools, engage in practically no business or profession, own no land, associate with no non-Jew, and frequent no park, library, or museum; and they were ordered to live in ghettos. By 1941 boys over 12 were conscripted into arms-making factories; all use of the telephone and public transportation systems was forbidden; and all Jews over 6 years of age were required to wear the yellow Star-of-David badge.

6. Sites of Rampage “Kristallnacht”

7. On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 leading Nazi bureaucrats, headed by the SS, met to discuss the "final solution of the Jewish question." The decision taken was to systematically evacuate Jews from all over occupied Europe to camps in the East, where they would be "treated accordingly." The most effective method for mass extermination became gassing in specially constructed gas chambers (disguised as showers), from which the bodies were removed to adjacent crematoriums. By this and other means, perhaps as many as 4 million Jews were put to death in the extermination camps & the other concentration camps. The total number of Jews exterminated by the Nazis during the war is estimated to be approximately 5.7 million. This plan of genocide was carried out with efficiency, and the victims, whose will to resist had been sapped by prolonged starvation and disease, were often unaware until the last moment that they were going to be gassed. Nevertheless, there was some Jewish resistance, both passive and active.
The Holocaust

11. Summary The Holocaust saw the murder of approximately 6 million Jews
Eight million others (Gypsies, Slavs, Homosexuals, and the disabled) also died in the Camps
While the Germans were the authors, they were aided by other nations like the Poles