• • 13:3 Nazi Persecution of the Jews – 6 million Jews killed – “

The Holocaust

” • In Hebrew, “

Shoah

” (catastrophe) Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavic people also killed

•

Nuremberg Laws

– Took citizenship away from Jews – Forbid marriage of Jews to Germans – Could not hold public office – Could not vote

•

Kristallnacht

(“night of broken glass”)(1938) – Jewish refugee killed a German soldier – Hitler allows retaliation against Jews • 90 Jews dead • 7,500 Jewish businesses and synagogues destroyed

•

Wannsee Conference

(1942) – “Final solution of the Jewish question” – Concentration camp • Healthy and young would work until they dropped dead – Extermination camp • Elderly, sick, and children executed in massive gas chambers

• Concentration Camps – Built throughout Europe – Buchenwald (Germany) 200,000 prisoners Worked 12-hour shifts Hundreds died every month from exhaustion and disease

• Extermination Camps – Treblinka – Auschwitz

•

Auschwitz

– 100,000 people in 300 barracks – Gas chambers could kill 2,000 people at a time – Sometimes gassed 12,000 people per day – 1,600,000 dead

• “I looked at a bottom bunk, and there I saw one man. He was too weak to get up; he could just barely turn his head. He was skin and bones. He looked like a skeleton; and his eyes were deep set. He didn’t utter a sound; he just looked at me with those eyes, and they still haunt me today” –

American soldier Leon Bass

“The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed”

– Stephen Ambrose