1. The Holocaust
The “Final Solution”

2. The Definition of Holocaust
Holocaust is a Greek word for “burned sacrifice”.
Jews have been persecuted throughout history for their religious beliefs and practices.
This was Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

3. How was this allowed to happen?
“In order for a house to burn down, three things are required. The timber must be dry and combustible, there needs to be a spark that ignites it, and external conditions must be favorable- not too damp, perhaps some wind.”
- Doris L. Bergen

4. Preconditions “The spark”: Hitler’s Nazi regime
“External conditions”: World War II
“Dry timber”: People had to be willing to accept the identification of other members of their society as enemies.
Nazis did not invent anti-semitism (hatred against Jews), nor were they the first to attack Roma (Gypsies).

5. Who was persecuted? Primarily Jews. 6 million were murdered.
Roma (Gypsies)
Physically and mentally disabled.
Afro-Europeans
Soviet POWs
Slavic people
Ethnic Poles
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Homosexuals

6. The Process
Nuremburg Laws- prohibited Jews from having certain jobs, going to school, marrying non-Jews, and forced them to wear the yellow Star of David. Jewish businesses were boycotted.

7. Nuremburg Laws

8. Humiliation of Jews

9. Life in the Ghettos
Jews all over Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Italy were forced to relocate to ghettos.
Life in the ghetto meant constant harassment, crowded housing, hunger, and loss of civil rights.

10. Jewish Ghettos

11. From the Ghettos to the Camps
Jews and other “undesirables” were then forced to leave the ghettos and be taken by train to concentration camps.

12. Arrival at the camps

13. Sorting, work assignments, and shaving

14. Life in the camps Starvation, slave work, humiliation, disease,
unsanitary
conditions.

15. “Work will set you free”- From the entrance to Auschwitz
Death in the camps- bodies were buried in mass graves or burned in mass piles (“Shoah piles”) or in ovens.
Victims were gassed, shot, burned, or worked/starved to death.

16. Death in the camps

17. Shoah Pile

18. Nazi Medical Experiments
Prisoners were often used as subjects in “medical experiments”
These involved freezing, burning, high altitude, isolation, sterilization, traumatic injuries, and unnecessary operations.
Dr. Josef Mengele- SS physician in charge of the experiments.

19. Medical experiments

20. Children as subjects

21. Liberation of the camps
Allied soldiers did not know what they would find at the camps. For many of them, the trauma was unbearable.
Allied soldiers retaliated against villagers who lived nearby, and did not stop it.
As punishment, Nazis and other citizens were forced to dispose of the bodies themselves.

23. How did the world react? Shock, anger, disgust, and shame.
Much of the world had disregarded these camps as “rumors” too savage to be true.
Peace treaties after the war noted that the world must never let this happen again. (Though, it has.)

24. Denial of the Holocaust

25. How many died? 6 million Jews and 6 million “other”
A total of approximately 12 million
Compare to…
Population of Los Angeles: 9,948,081
Population of San Francisco: 751,682
Population of NYC: 8,085,742
Population of Concord: 124,977