Transcript Document 7178599

Roots of the Holocaust
The Holocaust

The systematic slaughter of not only 6
million Jews, but also 5 million others,
approximately 11 million individuals wiped
off the Earth by the Nazi regime and its
collaborators.
Holocaust (hol·o·caust): n 1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life,
especially by fire
2. Greek word that means burnt whole or consumed by fire
Europe After WWI
Anti -Semitism
This is the term given to
political, social and
economic agitation against
Jews. In simple terms it
means ‘Hatred of Jews’.
Aryan Race
This was the name of what Hitler
believed was the perfect race. These
were people with full German blood,
blonde hair and blue eyes.
Conditions in Germany at
the end of WWI

Germany was a
defeated nation
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Peace Treaty
requirements
Stock Market Crash
Nazis and Germans
are not the same
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Nazi Party
German citizens
Adolf Hitler
courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Photo credit: USHMM Photo Archives
Photo credit: National Archives,
courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Rise of the Nazi Party
Hitler’s
Promises
Better
life
Germany
great
nation
courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Racial
Hitler Youth Parade
Hitler Youth march through Nuremberg, Germany past Nazi officials.
purity
The Nuremberg Laws
1933-1939
In 1933, Jews were publicly blamed
for Germany’s problems
 The "Nuremberg Laws" proclaimed
Jews second-class citizens, based on
that of a person's grandparents, not
that person's beliefs or identity.

“You have no right to live among us as Jews.”
“You have no right to live among us.”
“You have no right to live !”
Photo credit: Leopold Page Photographic Collection
Discrimination
Jews were forced to wear the “Star
of David” on their clothing to
identify themselves as Jews.
 They were discriminated in
employment, schools, and many
businesses would not allow them
to enter.

BADGES OF HATE
Ghetto Star
Kristallnacht
“Night Of Broken Glass”
Photo credits: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Kristallnacht “Night of broken glass”

On November 10 1938, the Kristallnacht
took place, in which Jewish buildings
were destroyed, and Jewish men were
arrested and murdered.

This was the start of Nazi violence
against Jews in Germany and Poland.
Jewish Store after Kristallnacht
Other Groups

Jews were not the only people targeted for
extermination by the Nazi’s

Gypsies
African-Germans
Homosexuals
Athiests
Physically and Mentally Disabled
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The Ghettos

Starting in 1933, Nazi officials forced Jewish
citizens into “ghettos” in order to control the
Jewish populations
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The ghettos were usually in the poorest areas of
a city, were dirty, frequently had no running
water, or heat.
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The largest ghettos were in Warsaw and Krakow
Poland
Liquidation of the Ghetto: 1943
People being “resettled” to Concentration Camps
Concentration Camp Children, shortly
before their execution

After WWII started in 1939, the ghettoes in
Poland and Germany were slowly emptied
out- the populations were sent to
concentration camps.

There were two types of basic camps:
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Work Camps
Death Camps
Map of Concentration Camps
Concentration Camps

The first concentration camp
opened in January 1933, when the
Nazis came to power, and continued
to run until the end of the war and
the Third Reich: May 8, 1945.
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The camps were run by the S.S.,
Hitler’s elite squad of troops.
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The most infamous of the concentration
camps were Auschwitz and Dachau.
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Dachau was the model for all other
concentration camps, it opened in 1933.
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Auschwitz was the largest and most deadly of
the camps.
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Between the two camps, millions of people
were killed, and disposed of by the Nazis
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The concentration camps followed
Hitler’s Plan of the “Final Solution”: to
exterminate all Jews from Europe.
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The camps used poison gas,
crematoriums, and mass shootings to
execute hundreds at a time
Part of a stockpile of Zyklon-B poison
gas pellets found at Majdanek death
camp.
Before poison gas was used , Jews
were gassed in mobile gas vans.
Carbon monoxide gas from the
engine’s exhaust was fed into the
sealed rear compartment. Victims
were dead by the time they reached
the burial site.
Portrait of two-year-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.
Even the very young…
Photo credit: German National Archives
In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis
ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all
traces.
Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at
Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September
of 1941.
Pile of Shoes from the Dead
At Auschwitz, men, women and children were tortured
and subject to experiments
Auschwitz Crematorium
Camp Survivors
Villains- Nazi Leaders
Heinrich Himmler
Head of the
Gestapo/ S.S.
In charge of
concentration Camps
Joseph Goebbels
Chief of
Propaganda
Hermann
Goering
Head of the
Luftwaffe,
Hitler’s Successor
Adolf Eichmann
Head of Jewish
Affairs.
In charge of Jewish
Deportation
Heroes

There were people who tried to help
Jews despite the danger of being
arrested or shot.

Men like Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar
Schindler saved thousands of people.
Oskar Schindler and friends
1945
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As Allied forces pushed German
troops back into German territory,
Nazis increased their executions.
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When the camps were freed by
American and Russian troops, mass
graves were discovered.
Percentage of Jews killed in each country