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Daily Question: October 28th
• Define prejudice.
• Define intolerance.
• Can you give any examples of these from
your life?
• What role did prejudice and intolerance
play in Nazi Germany?
Key Quote
“Terror is the best
political weapon for
nothing drives people
harder than a fear of
sudden death.”
The
• Heinrich Himmler ran
Terror
State
both the
Gestapo and the
SS.
• The SS - the Schutzstaffel
(German:"Protective
Squadron") Hitler’s Loyal
Bodyguard, but later the
executioners and runners
of the camps.
• The Gestapo – secret
police - had an army of
spies to inform on people.
How did the Terror State work?
Imprisoned for up to
six months doing hard
physical labor.
Handed over to the
SS who run the
camps.
D11 form gives your
consent to be put into
a labor camp.
When released you
tell everybody what
has happened to you
Fear
Days or maybe
weeks later you
are interrogated
and forced to sign
form D11
Gestapo Spies
inform on you
Woken up by the
Gestapo at 1 AM and
given 5 minutes to pack
your bags.
Arrested and
thrown into a cell
Enemies of the Nazi State
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Jews
Communists
Social Democrats
Trade Unions
“Work Shy” (Lazy)
Homosexuals
Gypsies
• Germans who bought
from Jews
• Pacifists
• Radical Christian
Organization
• Anyone who
criticized Hitler or
the Nazi Party.
Aryan Race
Hitler’s “perfect
race.”
People with full
German blood,
blonde hair and blue
eyes.
Anti –Semitism
Political, social
and economic
agitation against
Jews.
‘Hatred of Jews’.
Nazi Propaganda
At one time or another Jews had been persecuted in almost
every European country.
The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example.
In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge.
In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London.
Prejudice was still strong in the 20th century, especially in
Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish
population was very large.
After WWI Jews were blamed for Germany’s defeat.
Prejudice against Jews grew during the depression which
followed.
Solutions to
“The Jewish Question”
– exactly what to do with Jews in
Nazis territory.
• Nuremburg Laws – ”Racist” laws
written to control the German
Jewish population.
Limited the Civil Rights
of Jews
Nuremburg Laws - Examples
• Defined who was “Jewish” by parentage or
“blood.”
• Outlawed marriage between Jew and non-Jew
• Required Jews to Register with government.
• Required Jews to wear the Star of David.
• Limited property rights of Jews.
• Etc.
Kristallnacht – Nov. 9-10 1938
• “Night of Broken Glass” – Violence
against Jewish businesses and
synagogues.
Formation of Ghettos
• Nazis organized Jews into crowded
“Ghettos”
• Ghettos served as a waiting place for
Jews while they were forced to work
for the Nazis.
“Judenrat”
• Jewish Councils - appointed
by the Nazis to govern
Ghettos.
• Forced to make decisions
that lead to the death of their
own people.
Key Quote: Martin Niemollen, 1945
• When the Nazis came for the Communists I
was silent, I was not a Communist.
• When the Nazis came for the Social
Democrats I was silent, I was not a Social
Democrat.
• When the Nazis came for the Jews I was
silent, I was not a Jew.
• When the Nazis came for me there was
nobody left to protest.
The “Final Solution”
• Wannssee Conference (1942)
• Extermination of the Jewish
People – Genocide
• Holocaust – From Greek for
“Completely Burnt” AKA: Shoah
in Hebrew
Who carried out the “Final Soluition”?
• The SS - the Schutzstaffel
(German:"Protective Squadron") – initally
Hitler’s Loyal Bodyguard, but eventually
became the executioners and runners of the
camps.
• Einsatzgruppen (German: "intervention
groups") - Death Squads set up by and
within the SS to carry out extermination of
Jews.
Warning.
• The following images come directly from
the Holocaust, are unedited, and may be
disturbing.
Between 1939 and 1945
six million Jews were
murdered, along with
hundreds of thousands of
others, such as Gypsies,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
disabled and the
mentally ill.
Percentage of Jews killed in each country
A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS
USED BY THE NAZIS.
16 of the 44 children
taken from a French
children’s home.
They were sent to a
concentration camp
and later to Auschwitz.
ONLY 1 SURVIVED
A group of
children at a
concentration
camp in Poland.
Jewish women, some holding infants, are forced to wait in a line
before their execution by Germans and Ukrainian collaborators.
A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive
in the ravine after the mass execution.
Portrait of twoyear-old Mania
Halef, a Jewish
child who was
among the 33,771
persons shot by
the SS during the
mass executions at
Babi Yar,
September, 1941.
Nazis sift through a huge pile of clothes left
by victims of the massacre.
Two year old Mani Halef’s clothes are somewhere
amongst these.
Bales of hair shaven
from women at
Auschwitz, used to
make felt-yarn.
After liberation, an
Allied soldier displays
a stash of gold
wedding rings taken
from victims at
Buchenwald.
Initially Jews were buried.
Later, they were exhumed and cremated to
destroy evidence of the Holocaust.
A stockpile of Zyklon-B
poison gas pellets found
at Majdanek death camp.
After death
bodies were
disposed of in
large ovens.
Smoke rises as the
bodies are burnt.
“Until September 14, 1939 my life
was typical of a young Jewish boy
in that part of the world in that
period of time.
I lived in a Jewish community
surrounded by gentiles. Aside
from my immediate family, I had
many relatives and knew all the
town people, both Jews and
gentiles. Almost two weeks after
the outbreak of the war and shortly
after my Bar Mitzvah, my world
exploded.
WHY?
In the course of the next five and a
half years I lost my entire family
and almost everyone I ever knew.
Death, violence and brutality
became a daily occurrence in my
life while I was still a young
teenager.”
Leonard Lerer, 1991