Transcript The Holocaust Majority of information presented from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum In the last months of the European war –

The Holocaust
Majority of information presented from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In the last months of the European war – Allied forces uncovered horrors
How did the Holocaust develop and what
were its results?
•
GENOCIDE – willful annihilation of a
racial, political, or political group –first
termed in 40’s.
“Final Solution”- plan to murder
all European Jews.
Nuremberg Laws – Segregation,
Denied citizenship, banned marriages
between Jews and non-Jews.
•
Hitler urges Germans to boycott
Jewish businesses and
excluded Jews from many jobs.
Hitler blames Jews for the
problems in Germany.
•
Anyone with 3 or more Jewish
grandparents.
400+ anti-Jewish regulations in Hitler’s
first six years.
The Ghettos1939-1941
•Ghetto = 1516 Venice -name given to section of the city government forced
Jews to live. 15th & 16th centuries this practice continued in other cities as well.
•World War II ghettos were city districts where Germans isolated and controlled
the Jewish population through segregation and forced them to live under
miserable conditions.
•Three types – closed, open and destruction (Nazi’s in Berlin).
•The Warsaw ghetto in Poland was the largest - 400,000 Jews were crowded
into an area of 1.3 square miles.
•Identifying badges or armbands and required many to perform forced labor for
the German Reich.
•Daily life in the ghettos was administered by
Nazi-appointed Jewish councils (Judenraete).
The Camps
concentration camp - place where people are held, usually under harsh
conditions, without regard to legal norms that are true in a constitutional democracy.
•1933 -1945 - 20,000 camps for forced-labor, transit and extermination
•early concentration camps built to imprison and eliminate "enemies of the state."
•Used labor in concentration camps prisoners for economic profit / war is excuse to
prevent releases and as Germany takes over Austria & Poland forced labor camps
grow rapidly near factories.
•After the violent Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms the Nazis
conducted -1,500 synagogues, 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, 200 deaths, 600
injured, thousands arrested.
•As Germany takes over Austria & Poland forced labor
•camps grow rapidly
• Death by starvation & disease
• Doctors performed medical experiments on prisoners.
•To facilitate the "Final Solution" extermination camps were designed for efficient
mass murder. Gas chambers constructed to increase killing efficiency and to
make the process more impersonal for the perpetrators. (Auschwitz reportedly
gassed 6,000 Jews each day.) Carbon Monoxide or Insectiside in showers
•Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the camps were sent immediately to
death in the gas chambers (with the exception of very small numbers chosen for
special work team)
•During the last year of the war, the SS evacuated concentration camp prisoners
as the front approached so prisoners would not be liberated.
Red - political prisoners: communists, unionists
Green - "professional criminals " / convicts, parolees*
Blue - foreign forced laborers, emigrants
Purple – Jehovah’s Witnesses
Pink - sexual offenders & homosexual men*
Black – “A Social” and “work shy” = mentally
retarded, mentally ill, homeless,
alcoholic, Pacifists, Conscription
resisters, prostitutes, drug addicts
Brown = gypsies (Roma)- previously wore black triangle
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005395
Un-inverted red triangle = POW’s and deserters
* convicted in criminal court – may have gone to prison after
liberation
Yellow = Jewish
In addition to color-coding, some groups had to put
letter insignia on their triangles to denote country of
origin. (P=Poland, B=Belgium, F=France)
Repeat offenders – received bars over triangles.
Many various markings and combinations existed. A
prisoner would usually have at least two, and possibly
more than six.
Common Student Questions about the Holocaust
1. How could Hitler make the Holocaust happen by himself?
Hitler did not make the Holocaust happen himself. Many, many Germans and
non-Germans were involved in the so-called Final Solution. Besides the SS,
German government, Nazi party officials who helped to plan and carry out the
deportation, concentration, and murder of European Jews, many other
“ordinary” people – such as civil servants, doctors, lawyers, judges, soldiers,
and railroad workers – played a role in the Holocaust.
2. Why didn’t you leave Germany if you were Jewish?
Oppressive measures targeting Jews in the pre-war period were passed and
enforced gradually. These types of pre-war measures and laws had been
experienced throughout the history of the Jewish people in earlier periods and
in other countries as well. No one at the time could foresee or predict killing
squads and killing centers.
More would have left, if they found the means and made that decision but
were generally not welcome in other countries. World Wide Depression
3. Why wasn’t there more resistance?
The impression that Jews did not fight back against the Nazis is a myth. Jews carried
out acts of resistance in every country of Europe that the Germans occupied, as well as
in satellite states. They even resisted in ghettos, concentration camps and killing
centers, under the most harrowing of circumstances. Why is it then that the myth
endures? Period photographs and contemporary feature films may serve to perpetuate
it because they often depict large numbers of Jews boarding trains under the watchful
eyes of a few lightly armed guards. Not seen in these images, yet key to understanding
Jewish response to Nazi terror, are the obstacles to resistance.
4. How did they know who was Jewish?
Eventually Jews in Germany were locatable through census records. In other countries,
Jews might be found via synagogue membership lists, municipal lists or more likely
through mandatory registration and information from neighbors or local civilians and
officials.
5. What happened if you disobeyed an order to participate?
Contrary to popular assumption, those who decided to stop or not participate in
atrocities were usually given other responsibilities, such as guard duty or crowd
control. Quiet non-compliance was widely tolerated, but public denunciation of Nazi
anti-Jewish policy was not.
6. Wasn’t one of Hitler’s relatives Jewish?
There is no historical evidence to suggest that Hitler was Jewish. Recent scholarship
suggests that the rumors about Hitler’s ancestry were circulated by political
opponents as a way of discrediting the leader of an antisemitic party. These rumors
persist primarily because the identity of Hitler’s paternal grandfather is unknown;
rumors that this grandfather was Jewish have never been proven.
7. Why were the Jews singled out for extermination?
The explanation of the Nazis’ hatred of Jews rests on their distorted worldview, which saw
history as a racial struggle. They considered the Jews a race whose goal was world
domination and who, therefore, were an obstruction to “Aryan” dominance. They
believed that all of history was a fight between races, which should culminate in the
triumph of the superior “Aryan” race. Therefore, they considered it their duty to eliminate
the Jews, whom they regarded as a threat. In their eyes, the Jews’ racial origin made
them habitual criminals who could never be rehabilitated and were hopelessly corrupt
and inferior. There is no doubt that other factors contributed toward Nazi hatred of Jews
and their distorted image of the Jewish people. These included the centuries-old tradition
of Christian antisemitism, which propagated a negative stereotype of Jews as murderers
of Christ, agents of the devil, and practitioners of witchcraft.
8. What did the United States know and do?
Failure to help : anti-Semitism, apathy, pre-occupation with the Great Depressoin,
underestimating of Hitler’s plans. Unfortunate for those fleeing from Nazi persecution,
these issues greatly impacted this nation's refugee policy, resulting in tighter restrictions
and limited quotas at a time when open doors might have saved lives. Debates continue
on what the government and civilians knew. Was it not a priority or could they not
figure out how to rescue behind German lines.
US and British meet to discuss war refugees but do not come up with any answers.
Roosevelt establishes the War Refuge Board worked with the Red Cross to save
thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe. Was it too late? 4/5th of the Jews who would die
were already dead by 1944.
Could / should we have bombed railroad lines? Keep with strategy of defeating Hitler?
Resistance
1942-1944
• Organized armed Jewish civilians in over 100 ghettos
• Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans
would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center.
• Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a
handful of small
• Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police
units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.
• Other forms of non-violent resistance included sheltering Jews (sometimes at risk of
death), listening to forbidden Allied radio broadcasts, and producing clandestine
anti-Nazi newspapers. In the face of Nazi repression and violence, acts of resistance
at times significantly impeded German actions, saved lives, or simply boosted morale
of the persecuted.
Rescue & Liberation 1944-1945
• Enormity of Nazi crime became real only when soldiers began to liberate
camps. Piles of dead bodies, warehouses full of human hair and jewelry,
ashes in crematoriums, half-dead emaciated survivors.
• Soldiers hardened by war were still ill prepared
• Individuals in every European country and from all religious backgrounds
risked their lives to help Jews. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions
of individuals to organized networks both small and large. 3,000 – 5,000
• Individuals willing to help Jews in danger faced severe consequences if they
were caught,
• German-occupied Denmark was the site of the most famous and complete
rescue operation in Axis-controlled Europe. Martial Law / German
Businessman warning/ help from non-Jewish neighbors and friends, virtually
all the Danish Jews went into hiding / Danish fishermen secretly ferried 7,200 /
7,800 to Sweden
Aftermath
1945-2000
On December 17, 1942, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet
Union issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European
Jews and resolving to prosecute those responsible for crimes against civilian populations.
Nuremberg Trials – 12 Nazi Leaders were sentenced to death. Thousands of other Nazis
imprisoned.
Israel
Holocaust increased demand and support for and independent Jewish Homeland
1948 – Jewish community in Palestine proclaimed the State of Israel – the U.S.
immediately recognized the new nation.