1. Chapter 16: World War Looms Section 3: The Holocaust

2. Standards
11.7.5
Discuss the constitutional issues and impact of events on the U.S. home front, including the response of the administration to Hitler's atrocities against Jews and other groups.

3. Objectives
Following lecture and reading of this section, students will be able to:
Explain the reasons behind the Nazi’s persecution of Jews and the problems facing Jewish refugees
Describe the Nazi’s “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem and the horrors of the Holocaust
Identify and describe the profound and lasting effects of the Holocaust on surviviors

4. Overview
During the Holocaust, the Nazis systematically executed 6 million Jews and 5 million other “non-Aryans.”
11 million people total killed
Millions other imprisoned in work camps

5. Jews Targeted
Hitler ordered all “non-Aryans” to be removed from government jobs (1933)
Europe has long history of anti-Semitism
Hatred of Jews
Hitler claimed Jews were the cause of the failures of Germany’s economy and loss of WWI
Germans believe Hitler’s claims, blame Jews for problems
Genocide-systematic extermination of a group

6. Kristallnacht Nuremburg Laws
Nazis take away from Jews
Citizenship
Jobs
Property
Require all Jews to wear Star of David (yellow)
Kristallnacht (11/9/38)-Nazis attacked Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues
About 100 Jews killed, hundreds injured, 30,000 arrested
Goal: get Jews to leave
Jews blamed for destroying their own property

7. A Flood of Jewish Refugees
1938, Nazis try to speed up Jewish emigration
Jews cannot find any nations to take them.
France takes 40,000 refugees, Britain takes 80, ,000 in Palestine; both refuse more
U.S. takes 100,000 “persons of exceptional merit” as refugees
Americans feared economic strain of refugees, entrance of enemy agents; anti-Semitism developed

8. The Plight of the St. Louis
The St. Louis was a Jewish ocean liner
Headed for U.S.
Full of Jewish refugees from Germany
Coast Guard prevented passengers on St. Louis from disembarking
Would not let the Jews into America
Ship forced to return to Europe; most passengers killed in Holocaust

9. The Condemned Targeted: Hitler’s Final Solution: Jews Gypsies
Slavery
Genocide of “inferior” groups
Genocide- deliberate, systematic killing of an entire population
Nazi death squads rounded up Jews & shot them (SS)
Targeted:
Jews
Gypsies
Freemasons
Jehovah’s Witnesses
unfit Germans
Homosexuals
Mentally retarded

10. Forced Relocation Jews were forced into ghettos
segregated areas in Polish cities
Inside the ghettos, some formed resistance movements
Underground newspapers
Others maintain Jewish culture
Education
Theater
Music

11. Concentration Camps
Many Jews taken to concentration camps, or labor camps
Families often were separated
Camps were originally prisons
Camps were given to SS to warehouse “undesirables”
Prisoners crammed into wooden barracks, given little food, most died…
Worked dawn to dusk, 7 days per week
Those too weak to work are killed

12. Mass Exterminations
Germans built death camps; gas chambers used to kill thousands
On arrival, SS doctors separated those who could or could not work
Those who can’t work immediately killed in gas chamber
At first bodies buried in pits
Later cremated to cover up evidence
Some are shot, hanged, poisoned, or die from experiments

13. The Survivors About 6 million Jews killed in death camps, massacres
Some escape, many with help from ordinary people
Some survive concentration camps
Survivors forever changed by experience