Transcript holocaust

The Holocaust
The “Final Solution”
The Definition of Holocaust
• Holocaust is a Greek word for “burned
sacrifice”.
• Jews have been persecuted throughout
history for their religious beliefs and
practices.
• This was Hitler’s “Final Solution to the
Jewish Question”.
How was this allowed to
happen?
“In order for a house to burn down, three
things are required. The timber must be
dry and combustible, there needs to be
a spark that ignites it, and external
conditions must be favorable- not too
damp, perhaps some wind.”
- Doris L. Bergen
Preconditions
• “The spark”: Hitler’s Nazi regime
• “External conditions”: World War II
• “Dry timber”: People had to be willing to
accept the identification of other members of
their society as enemies.
– Nazis did not invent anti-semitism (hatred against
Jews), nor were they the first to attack Roma
(Gypsies).
Who was persecuted?
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Primarily Jews. 6 million were murdered.
Roma (Gypsies)
Physically and mentally disabled.
Afro-Europeans
Soviet POWs
Slavic people
Ethnic Poles
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Homosexuals
The Process
• Nuremburg Laws- prohibited Jews from
having certain jobs, going to school,
marrying non-Jews, and forced them to
wear the yellow Star of David. Jewish
businesses were boycotted.
Nuremburg Laws
Humiliation of Jews
Life in the Ghettos
• Jews all over Germany, Austria, Poland,
Hungary, and Italy were forced to
relocate to ghettos.
• Life in the ghetto meant constant
harassment, crowded housing, hunger,
and loss of civil rights.
Jewish Ghettos
From the Ghettos to the
Camps
• Jews and other “undesirables” were
then forced to leave the ghettos and be
taken by train to concentration camps.
Arrival at the camps
Sorting, work assignments,
and shaving
Life in the camps
Starvation,
slave work,
humiliation,
disease,
unsanitary
conditions.
“Work will set you free”From the entrance to Auschwitz
• Death in the camps- bodies were buried
in mass graves or burned in mass piles
(“Shoah piles”) or in ovens.
• Victims were gassed, shot, burned, or
worked/starved to death.
Death in the camps
Shoah Pile
Nazi Medical Experiments
• Prisoners were often used as subjects
in “medical experiments”
• These involved freezing, burning, high
altitude, isolation, sterilization, traumatic
injuries, and unnecessary operations.
• Dr. Josef Mengele- SS physician in
charge of the experiments.
Medical experiments
Children as subjects
Liberation of the camps
• Allied soldiers did not know what they would
find at the camps. For many of them, the
trauma was unbearable.
• Allied soldiers retaliated against villagers who
lived nearby, and did not stop it.
• As punishment, Nazis and other citizens were
forced to dispose of the bodies themselves.
How did the world react?
• Shock, anger, disgust, and shame.
• Much of the world had disregarded
these camps as “rumors” too savage to
be true.
• Peace treaties after the war noted that
the world must never let this happen
again. (Though, it has.)
Denial of the Holocaust
How many died?
• 6 million Jews and 6 million “other”
• A total of approximately 12 million
Compare to…
Population of Los Angeles: 9,948,081
Population of San Francisco: 751,682
Population of NYC: 8,085,742
Population of Concord: 124,977