By Tracey Burns

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Holocaust Lesson

• By Tracey Burns

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Holocaust What does it mean?

• "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning
  "sacrifice by fire."
• The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic,
  state sponsored persecution and murder of
  approximately six million Jews by the Nazis.
• The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially
  superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior,"
  were "life unworthy of life."

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• During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also
  targeted other groups because of their perceived
  "racial inferiority" Roma (Gypsies), the
  handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples
  (Poles, Russians, and others).
• Other groups were persecuted on political and
  behavioral grounds, among them Communists,
  Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

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Holocaust Vocabulary

• Allies nations that joined the war again Nazi
  Germany
• Antisemitism prejudice towards the Jews
• Auschwitz largest Nazi concentration camp
• Axis nations that joined forces with Germany
• Concentration camps prison camps built to hold
  Jews, gypsies, and anyone racially undesirable
• Death marches a forced march with brutal
  treatment by the SS
• Extermination camp camps that were equipped
  with gassing facilities and crematoria for the
  mass murder of Jews.
• Final Solution code words used by Nazis
  referring to the destruction of the Jewish people
  in Europe
• Genocide liquidation of a people
• Gestapo the secret State Police of the Third
  Reich
• Ghettos sections of towns in which Jews were
  forced to live
• Hitler, Alolf Leader of the Third Reich,
  Chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945
• Kristallnacht Night of Broken Glass
• Swastika Nazi insignia

Students will be responsible for the vocabulary
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Timeline of Important Events

• January 1933 Hitler appointed Chancellor of
  Germany
• March 1933 1st concentration camp at Dachau
  established
• August 1936 Olympics in Berlin all
  Anti-Semitic signs removed
• July 1937 Buchenwald camp established
• March 1938 Austria annexed by Germany
• November 1938 Kristallnacht Night of Broken
  Glass
• 2 days later government requires Jews to
  repay all damages
• March 1939 Germany invades Czechoslovakia
• June 1939 United States refuses Jewish refugees
  aboard S.S. St. Louis
• August 1939 Soviet German Non-aggression Pact
  signed
• September 1939 German army invades Poland WWII
  begins
• Spring 1940 Germany invades Denmark, Norway,
  Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands and France
• May 1940 Auschwitz camp opens

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Timeline cont.

• March/April 1940 Germany invades North Africa,
  Yugoslavia Greece
• June 1941 Germany invades Soviet Union
• October 1941 Birkenau added to Auschwitz
• December 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
• Germany declares war on U.S.
• Early 1942 mass murder of Jews in gas chambers
  begins
• June 1942 Treblinka death camp opens
• March 1944 Germany invades Hungary
• June 1944 Allied Powers invade Normandy
• July 1944 Soviet army liberates death camp at
  Maidanek
• October 1944 Rebellion at Auschwitz
• January 1945 Soviets liberate Auschwitz,
  Buchanwald and Dachau
• April 1945 Hitler commits suicide
• May 1945 Germany surrenders
• November 1945 war crimes at Nuremberg

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Holocaust Pictures
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http//baby.indstate.edu/gga/gga_cart/gecar127.htm
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Bergen-Belsen Camp

• Located near Hannover, Germany.
• The original plan was for Bergen-Belsen to be a
  model camp where the Red Cross and other
  international aid organizations could examine
  the prisoners. That soon changed.
• It started in 1943 as a concentration camp.
• The people were brought in from other camps, such
  as Auschwitz, Piotrkow, and Neuengamme.
• Jewish women from Neusalz were brought there by
  train in 1945.
• Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, died here.
• Corpses were burned in a crematoria oven.
• In total, one thousand and seven people were
  killed there.
• The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 by the
  British forces
• After the liberation in April, about five
  thousand more people died from weakness and
  exhaustion.
• In September 1945, forty-eight members of the
  Bergen-Belsen staff were tried.
• In December, eleven of them were executed.

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Liberation of the Camps

• As Allied troops moved across Europe, they began
  to encounter concentration camp prisoners.
• Soviet forces were the first to approach a major
  Nazi camp, Majdanek, in July 1944.
• In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran
  the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka
  extermination camps.  
• The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest
  extermination and concentration camp, in January
  1945.
• There was evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz.
  The Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses,
  but in the remaining ones the Soviets found
  personal belongings of the victims. They
  discovered hundreds of thousands of men's suits,
  more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than
  14,000 pounds of human hair.
• In the following months, the Soviets liberated
  additional camps in the Baltic states and in
  Poland

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Nuremberg Trials

• The trials began on November 20, 1945.
• The trials were conducted by a military court in
  the US, England, SU, France, and at Nuremberg,
  Germany.
• Three out of the twenty-two were found not
  guilty.
• The trials ended after eleven months on October
  1,1946.

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References

• Ayer, Eleanor H. and Stephen D. Chicoine.
  Holocaust From the Ashes. Woodbridge Blackbirch
  Press, Inc.,1986.
• Ayer, Eleanor H. Holocaust Inferno. Woodbridge
  Blackbirch Press, Inc., 1998
• Botwinick, Rita Steinhart. A History of the
  Holocaust From Ideology to Annihilation. Upper
  Saddle River Pearson Education Inc.,
  2004,2001,1996
• Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember The
  History of The Holocaust. Canada Little, Brown,
  and Company, 1994
• Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know. Boston
  Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
• http//history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/bl
  campsbergen.htm
• About the Project. Nuremberg Trials Project.
  2003. http//nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_sw
  i.php?DI1textoverview
• Schlater,P.and M. Mora. Overview of the Trials.
  The Nuremberg Trials.December 4, 2000.
  http//www.fatherryan.org/holocaust/nuremburg/Nure
  mbergINDEX.htm.
• Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
  College of Education, University of Southern
  Florida. Photos The Nuremberg Trials. A
  Teachers Guide to the Holocaust. 2005.
  http//fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/galle
  ry/N1945.htm14465.
• Holocaust Memorial Museum.Einsatzgruppen.
  Holocaust Encyclopedia.http//www.ushmm.org/wlc/ar
  ticle.php?langenModuleId10005130