Transcript The Holocaust - Burlington County Institute of Technology

 Hitler targeted Jews from the time he came to
Power
 By the end of the war Nazis had killed 6 million
Jews and 5 million other people they
considered inferior
 In 1945 there was no word for what took
place
 Today, the Nazi attempt to kill all Jews
under their control is called the
Holocaust
 Direct result of Nazi ideology that
considered Aryans superior to others
 Prejudice and discrimination against
Jews
 Blamed Jews for the problems of
Germany
 Persecution began as soon as Hitler became
Chancellor in 1933
 Urged boycotts of Jewish business and banned
Jews from certain jobs
 Nuremberg Laws- denied German citizenship,
banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews,
segregated Jews
 Used newspapers, the youth, and comics to
spread his hate
 Most serious act of violence against the Jews
 “Night of Broken Glass”
 After a Jewish refugee killed a German
diplomat in Paris, Nazis ordered attacks on
Jews
 Synagogues and businesses were destroyed
 Many were killed and injured
 U.S. turned away German refugees
 Hundreds would return to Germany and die in
camps
 Legislation and acts of brutality were step towards
Hitler’s “Final Solution”
 Systematic extermination of all Jews living in the regions
controlled by the Third Reich
 Today we call this willful annihilation of a racial,
political, or cultural group genocide
 Early camps Dachau and Buchenwald
 Camps were designed to turn prisoners into “useful
members” of the Third Reich
 Imprisoned those who spoke out against Hitler
 Jews
 Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, beggars, physically
disabled, mentally disabled
 Numbers tattooed on arm
 Vertically striped uniforms
 Triangular insignias
 No real restraints on guards
actions
 Prisoners were systematically exterminated
 Largest was Auschwitz in Poland
 Prisoners from various places were transported
by trains to the camps
 Forced into death chambers with carbon
monoxide or showers with insecticide
 After the Nazis took what they wanted from the
bodies, they burned in crematoriums
 When concentration camps were turned into
death camps, “Action Groups” shot hundreds of
thousands of prisoners and buried them in
ditches
 While many survivors have nightmares of the
experience or survivor guilt, many were
determined to rebuild their life in the U.S.,
Israel, or elsewhere and continue to be
productive citizens
 Could the western nations have stepped in?
 With more relaxed immigration policies, they
could have saved more lives
 Weak response blamed on anti-Semitism,
apathy, Great Depression issues, and
underestimating Hitler
 First acknowledgement of killings was in 1942
 FDR did not take action until 1944
 The WRB worked with the Red Cross to help
thousands of Eastern European Jews
 Soviet Union was closest to camps but Stalin
showed no concern
 Too little was done to make a large impact
 Realization of crimes only became real when
the soldiers began to liberate camps
 The soldiers were not prepared for the piles of
bodies, warehouse of human hair and jewelry,
ashes, and emaciated bodies
 This led to an outpouring of support from
Americans
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHcJtU9dr6I
 The revelation of the
Holocaust also increased
demand and support for an
independent Jewish
homeland
 1948- Truman recognizes the
Jewish community in
Palestine as the State of
Israel
 The U.S. became one of their
strongest allies