The Holocaust 1940 1945

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The Holocaust 1940 - 1945
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• Holocaust destruction by fire.
• Genocide The systematic and planned
  extermination of an entire national, racial,
  political, or ethnic group.

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Pre-War

• Jews were living in every country in Europe
  before the Nazis came into power in 1933
• Approximately 9 million Jews
• Poland and the Soviet Union had the largest
  populations
• Jews could be found in all walks of life
  farmers, factory workers, business people,
  doctors, teachers, and craftsmen

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Anti-Semitism

• Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination for
  over 2,000 years.
• Jews were scapegoats for many problems. For
  example, people blamed Jews for the Black Death
  that killed thousands in Europe during the Middle
  Ages.

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How It Started

• After Germany lost World War I, a new government
  formed and became the Weimar Republic.

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How It Started

• Many Germans were upset not only that they had
  lost the war but also that they had to repay
  (make reparations) to all of the countries that
  they had damaged in the war.

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How It Started

• The total bill that the Germans had to pay was
  equivalent to nearly 70 billion.
• The German army was limited in size.
• Extremists blamed Jews for Germanys defeat in
  WWI and blamed the German Foreign Minister (a
  Jew) for his role in reaching a settlement with
  the Allies.

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How It Started

• The German mark became worth less than the paper
  it was printed onhyperinflation occurred.
• Nearly 6 million Germans were unemployed.

A ten million mark Reichsbanknote paper
currency that was issued by the German national
bank during the height of the inflation in 1923.
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Nazi Germany

• Hitler gained control of Germany in 1933, getting
  votes by blaming Jews for the ills that had
  befallen Germany.

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Nazi Germany
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Totalitarian State

• Totalitarianism is the total control of a country
  in the governments hands
• It subjugates individual rights.
• It demonstrates a policy of aggression.

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Totalitarian State

• In a totalitarian state, paranoia and fear
  dominate.
• The government maintains total control over the
  culture.
• The government is capable of indiscriminate
  killing.
• During this time in Germany, the Nazis passed
  laws which restricted the rights of Jews
  including the Nuremberg Laws.

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Totalitarian State

• The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German
  citizenship. They were prohibited from marrying
  or having sexual relations with persons of
  German or related blood.

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How did Nazis determine who was Jewish?

• It was decided that if one of persons parents
  was Jewish, then they were Jewish.

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Totalitarian State

• The Nazis used propaganda to promote their
  anti-Semitic ideas.

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Totalitarian State

• One such book was the childrens book, The
  Poisonous Mushroom.

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Totalitarian State

• The Nazis used propaganda to promote German
  nationalism.

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Persecution

• 1933, Jews were denied public jobs and Jewish
  businesses were boycotted

This sign says Germans! Defend Yourselves! Do
not buy from Jews!
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Persecution

• In 1940, all Jews had to have their passports
  stamped with the letter J and had to wear the
  yellow Star of David on their jacket or coat.

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Persecution

• Nazis targeted other individuals and groups in
  addition to the Jews

• Gypsies (Sinti and Roma)
• Homosexuals
• Jehovahs Witness
• Handicapped
• Poles
• Political dissidents

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Persecution

• The Nazi plan for dealing with the Jewish
• Question evolved in three steps
• 1. Expulsion Get them out of Germany
• 2. Containment Put them all together in one
  place namely ghettos
• 3. Final Solution annihilation

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Prelude to The Final Solution

• In 1939, Germany invaded Poland which had a much
  larger population of 3 million Jews.
• In 1941, Germany invaded Russia which had a
  population of 5 million Jews.

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Prelude to The Final Solution

• Himmler sent four specially trained SS units
  called Einsatzgruppen battalions into German
  occupied territory and shot at least 1 million
  Jews.
• Victims were taken to deserted areas where they
  were made to dig their own graves and shot.

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Prelude to The Final Solution
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Prelude to The Final Solution

• In January 1942, Himmler decided to change
  tactics once again and called a special
  conference at Wannsee.
• At this conference it was decided that the
  existing methods were too inefficient and that a
  new Final Solution was necessary.

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Wannsee Conference
Shooting was too inefficient as the bullets were
needed for the war effort
Women, children, the old the sick were to be
sent for special treatment.
The young and fit would go through a process
called destruction through work.
On arrival the Jews would go through a process
called selection.
How was the Final Solution going to be organised?
Jews were to be rounded up and put into transit
camps called Ghettoes
The remaining Jews were to be shipped to
resettlement areas in the East.
The Jews living in these Ghettos were to be used
as a cheap source of labour.
Conditions in the Ghettos were designed to be so
bad that many die whilst the rest would be
willing to leave these areas in the hope of
better conditions
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What tactics did the Nazis use to get the Jews to
leave the Ghettos?
Deception
New arrivals at the Death camps were given
postcards to send to their friends.
Starvation
The Jews were told that they were going to
resettlement areas in the East.
The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were only fed a
1000 calories a day .
Tactics
In some Ghettos the Jews had to purchase their
own train tickets.
A Human being needs 2400 calories a day to
maintain their weight
Terror
They were told to bring the tools of their trade
and pots and pans.
The SS publicly shot people for smuggling food or
for any act of resistance
Hungry people are easier to control
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Ghettos

• Many ghettos were closed by barbed wire or walls
  and were guarded by SS or local police.
• Jews sometimes had to use bridges to go over
  Aryan streets that ran through the ghetto.

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Jews herded down the street by the SS during
theliquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto
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Children Starving in a Warsaw Ghetto
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The Final Solution

• Death camps were the means the Nazis used to
  achieve the final solution.
• There were six death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau,
  Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, and
  Belzec.
• Each used gas chambers to murder the Jews. At
  Auschwitz prisoners were told the gas chambers
  were showers.

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Location of Death Camps
The work of the Einsatzgruppen
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The Final Solution

• The Jews were transported from the ghettos to
  concentration camps in cattle cars in terrible
  conditions.

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The Final Solution

• At Auschwitz the trains pulled into a mock up of
  a normal station.

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The Final Solution

• The Jews were helped off the cattle trucks by
  Jews who were specially selected to help the
  Nazis

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The Final Solution

• The gates to Auschwitz read Work Will Set You
  Free

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The Final Solution

• All new arrivals went through a process known as
  selection.

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The Final Solution

• Mothers, children, the old sick were sent
  straight to the showers which were really the
  gas chambers.

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The Final Solution

• The Nazis would force large groups of prisoners
  into small cement rooms and drop canisters of
  Zyklon B, or prussic acid, in its crystal form
  through small holes in the roof.

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The Final Solution

• These gas chambers were sometimes disguised as
  showers or bathing houses.

• The SS would try and pack up to 2000 people into
  this gas chamber

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The Final Solution

• Specially selected Jews known as the
  Sonderkommando were used to remove the gold
  fillings and hair of people who had been gassed.
• The Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed
  the dead bodies into the crematorium.

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The Final Solution
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The outside of the Gas Chamber
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The Final Solution

• The able bodied were sent to work camps were they
  were killed through a process known as
  destruction through work.

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Aftermath

• Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate camp
  prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Maidanek in
  Poland.
• British, Canadian, American, and French troops
  also liberated camp prisoners.
• Troops were shocked at what they saw.

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Aftermath

• Most prisoners were emaciated to the point of
  being skeletal.
• Many camps had dead bodies lying in piles like
  cordwood.
• Many prisoners died even after liberation.

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Aftermath

• Former prisoners of the "little camp" in
  Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in
  which they slept three to a "bed." Elie Wiesel is
  pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from
  the left, next to the vertical beam.

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Aftermath

• 11 million people died.
• 6 million were Jewish (close to two thirds of
  Europe's Jewish population).
• 5 million were non-Jews (Slavs, Gypsies,
  Homosexuals, Political Enemies, Jehovah's
  Witnesses, physical and mentally handicapped,
  sympathetic citizens, etc).
• 1.5 million were children.

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• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
  is for good men to do nothing.
• Edmund Burke
• "Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the
  past are destined to repeat them."