1. Mini Theater of Important Events: The Holocaust

2. Holocaust
A program during WW II of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.
The genocide of approximately six million European Jews, along with Romanians, Soviet civilians, Soviet POW’s, ethnic Poles, the disabled, homosexuals and political and religious opponents

3. Persecution & segregation of Jews implemented in stages:
1. State enforced racism
2. Establish ghettos
3. Einsatzgruppen
4. Concentration camps
5. Death camps

4. Persecution
In occupied Austria, SS Nazis and local residents watch with delight as Jews are being humiliated by being forced to get on their hands and knees and scrub the pavement.

5. Ghettos
Jews were rounded up and segregated from the regular population
In the Warsaw Ghetto, over 100,000 of the residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings
At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated to be 440,000 people, about 38% of the population of Warsaw Poland. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, building a wall with armed guards.

6. Einsatzgruppen
When the Germans invaded Poland and the USSR, the Einsatzgruppen traveled behind the German armies
They rounded up anyone in the villages who they considered hostile to the Third Reich.
1.5 million Jews, Soviets, and Gypsies were shot and killed

8. The Final Solution
Heinrich Himmler
When the killings by the Einsatzgruppen were not eliminating Jews fast enough, the decision was made to eradicate the entire Jewish population using extermination camps.
This was to be the Final Solution

9. Routes to Extermination Camps

10. Auschwitz Extermination Camp in Poland
The entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz 1. The gate bears the cynical Nazi motto “Work makes one free”

11. Auschwitz
The largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps located in Poland.
1,100,000 (1.1million) people died at Auschwitz. 90% were Jews from almost every country in Europe that had been sent there.
Most victims were killed in gas chambers. Other deaths were from systematic starvation, forced labor, disease, executions, and medical experiments.

12. Selection at Auschwitz
Jews from all over Europe came to Auschwitz on trains – shoved into cattle cars without even room to sit down.
When they arrived they were divided up in two sections: those selected for work or those selected for immediate death.

13. Those selected for death…
Prisoners heads were shaved, and their belongings taken from them: clothes, glasses, wedding rings, and even gold fillings were taken from their teeth.
Prisoners were then told they would be taken the showers.
Sacks of human hair found at Auschwitz – it was used to make felt-yarn.
U.S. troops found rings, watches, precious stones, eyeglasses, and gold fillings at the concentration camps

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

15. Death in the Camps
They filled the “showers” shoulder to shoulder with prisoners and locked them inside
Metal canisters of either carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, or Zyklon B were dropped in. Those prisoners not picked for “death” who were on the outside said that you could hear screaming for about 20 minutes until it went silent.

16. Crematoriums
By 1943 Auschwitz housed 8 gas chambers and 46 ovens that could dispose of about 4,400 corpses a day
Even though they ran the crematoriums 24/7, they could not destroy all the bodies.
In 1945 when the war was over, and the surviving prisoners were liberated, there were tens of thousands of bodies laying in piles in the concentration camps

17. Auschwitz:
If you are interested in reading more on the what happened to the Jews and other prisoners at the hands of the Nazis, go to:
If you have time, click on the other information on the left

18. Life at Auschwitz

19. For identification, every inmate not sent to the gas chambers was tattooed with a number on their arm

20. Nazi Experiments
Dr. Joseph Mengele performed experiments on 1,500 sets of twins by at Auschwitz, which ranged from injection of chemicals into the eyes of twins to see whether it would change their color to literally sewing twins together in attempts to create conjoined twins

22. Immersed in icy water at the Dachau concentration camp
Salt Water only test victim

23. After the War

24. Freedom for the Survivors

25. Confronting the Realty of the Holocaust
After the war, many Germans in the surrounding areas refused to believe what had happened in the camps. The Allied soldiers made them view the carnage, bury the bodies, and clean up the camps

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