Transcript The Holocaust

“ In Germany, first they came for the
Communists and I didn’t speak up because I
wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the
Trade Unionists and I didn’t speak up because
I wasn’t a Trade Unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I
was a Protestant. Then they came for the Jews
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me…and by that time no
one was left to speak up.”
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Pastor Martin Niemoller
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At the end of the war, the cruelty of the Nazis
was revealed to the world
In Canada, few people knew about the
Concentration Camps or what had happened
in them
During the final months of the war, Allied
armies had liberated 1000’s of Jews from the
camps…amidst unspeakable horror
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They found stacks of bodies and mass graves
Gas chambers and ovens for cremation
Skeletal survivors
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Millions had been imprisoned, tortured and
executed by the Nazis, including – political
prisoners, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
homosexuals, Poles, POW’s …. But mostly
Jews
The Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews of
Europe and the world
“anti-semitism” was one of the founding
policies of the Nazi Party, and Hitler held the
Jews responsible for Germany’s economic
problems
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The persecution of the Jews, begun in 1933
with the rise of Hitler to Chancellor of
Germany, entered a new phase at the
beginning of the war
3 million Jews fell into the hands of the Nazis
with the invasion of Poland….300,000 would
survive….
100,000’s of Jews were taken in Denmark,
Norway, Holland, France and Germany
Jews were kicked out of their homes and
moved into “ghettos”…and often families were
forced to share apts. in terrible conditions
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The Nazis forced the Jews to wear the yellow
Star of David, carry ID papers and even work
for the Nazi regime
They were forced out of their jobs and food
was so rationed that 1000’s died of starvation
When the “Wehrmacht” invaded the Soviet
Union in 1941, the Nazis intensified their
methods vs. “the Jewish problem”
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Created the “Schuzstaffel” (SS) – police
Massive executions of Russian Jews in the winter of
1941-42 – they were forced to dig their own graves
and then shot
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January 1942 – the leaders of the SS met at
Wannsee (near Berlin) to put into place their
new policy called “Endlosung”…or, “The Final
Solution”…. which was the secret
extermination of all 11 million Jews in Europe
After Wannsee, the Nazis sped up construction
of gas chambers in the concentration camps
“ghetto jews” were transferred to camps like
Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen...
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The camps were run by special “death squad”
units of the SS
The sick, elderly, disabled, children and those
unable to work were “gassed” in chambers
disguised as showers
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At Auschwitz, 2000 could be killed at a time
Many Jews, like those in the Warsaw ghetto in
Poland, fought back against the Nazis for
months before being sent to camps
6 million Jews were murdered during the
Holocaust…. 1 million survived the camps