9. The Holocaust:Who Did it Involve?
Not just Jewish people!
Jews, gypsies, mentally & physically handicapped people, Soviet POWs, communists, trade unionists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “anti-socials”- millions of innocent people were persecuted and murdered
6 million Jews murdered, 5 million non Jews

10. The Jewish in Germany
In 1933 there were nine-million Jews in 21 European countries, around 500,000 in Germany alone

11. Why the Jewish?
Hitler thought that a mutual hate of the Jewish would unite the Germans and make them more loyal and obedient to him
Anti-Semitism: prejudice/hostility towards Jewish people.
The NAZIs saw the Jews as well as other groups discriminated against as inferior to Germans and therefore a biological threat to their race

12. Anti-Semitism & The Aryan Race
Hitler saw the German (Aryan) race as superior to others
The NAZIs called the Aryan race the “master race”
They aimed to ensure that the state was all “Germanic”- able to go back at least 3 generations without any “non-Aryan” mixing

13. Aryans
The 'ideal German' was also supposed to be tall, slim, physically fit, free of any disability, deformity, abnormality or mental illness and sexually 'straight'

14. How it started...

15. Hiding & Ghettos
Some Jewish families went into hiding. A few German citizens risked their lives by hiding Jews. Children were often separated from their parents and forced to take on Christian identities
Ghettos were designated parts of the city were Jewish people were forced to live. They were often surrounded by barbed wire and were full of disease.

16. Concentration Camps 1941: establishment of camps on Hitler’s orders
Two types: concentration camps and extermination camps
In concentration camps, prisoners were forced to work and often died of starvation if they weren’t killed outright
In extermination camps, prisoners were there only to be executed
Many died in transportation to the camps
They were transported by railcar and often died before reaching the camp of starvation, cold, or lack of air.

17. What happened here? Genocide: Medical experiments:
The deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic or racial group
Hitler’s “final solution”: exterminate all Jews in Europe.
Medical experiments:
Freezing experiments
Poison experiments
Sterilization experiments
Sea water experiments
Malaria experiments
Skin from bodies was used to make gloves and lampshades, hair to stuff mattresses, and gold fillings and other goods were collected and saved.

18. How was Canada involved?
Jews could not go to other European countries due to anti-Semitic feelings
May 15, 1939: 907 Jews boarded a ship, the S.S. St. Louis, that was to take them to Cuba where they could safely enter the United States. When they arrived, the Cuban government would not admit them.
Some influential Canadians heard of the S.S. St. Louis and sent a telegram to Prime Minister Mackenzie King asking him to admit the refugees

19. Mackenzie King said that there could be no “open door” policy due to high unemployment rates, and the ship was forced to return to Europe
Great Britain admitted 287 of the refugees – they were the only ones that were safe from the Holocaust. Many of the others perished in concentration camps
Canada only accepted about 5000 Jews during the Holocaust – one of the lowest of any of the refugee receiving countries

20. Heroes of the Holocaust
Oskar Schindler: outwitted the NAZIs by having Jews work at his factory and smuggling food and medicine in, saving about 1200 people
Irena Sendler: smuggled babies and children out of Jewish ghettos, saving about 2500 children