Jewish Holocaust of World War II Arbeit Macht Frei “Work Shall Set You Free”

Jewish Holocaust of World War II

Arbeit Macht Frei

“Work Shall Set You Free”

Why?

• Anti-Semitism – “Anti-Jewish” feelings

• Jewish Diaspora, or movement, from Judea (Israel) throughout history

• Jews spread throughout Europe

• Basic doctrinal differences b/w Christians and Jews

Jewish Diaspora from 1100-1500

Victim Statistics

• Six years of killing, 1939-1945

• Over 5,700,000 dead

(Population of Maryland: 5,375,156)

• Babies killed before births could be recorded – death toll is much higher

• Largest amount of deaths took place in modern Poland

Persecuted Groups

Roma (Gypsies)• WWII Deaths - 245,810 - 263-110Homosexuals• 5,000-15,000 incarcerated in concentration camps• Over half of those incarcerated believed murderedJehovah's Witnesses• 6,000 individuals sent to concentration camps• Only 3,900 survivors in 1945Mentally / Physically  Handicapped• 400,000 forcibly sterilized• 275,000 murdered

German Identifying Marks

Jew Gypsy  Bible Researcher

 Homosexual

Habitual Criminal

Political Prisoner

Asocial  Emigrant

The Camps

• Over 15,000 camps established

• Categories:

-Work camps

-Extermination camps

-Prison camps

Major Nazi Death Camps

• Chelmno

• Treblinka

• Sobibór

• Majdanek

• Belzec

• Auschwitz-Birkenau

Jewish Population in Europe - 1939

Railcars were always overstuffed with victims. Many never made it to the camps, awaiting death

while gasping for air between their fellow humans.

Many perished en-route to the death camps. Prisoners were not fed, nor allowed to

use the restroom.

The Camps

Auschwitz Layout Dachau Layout

Site of the station platform at Treblinka where Jews disembarked. The stones lying to the side

represent the train tracks; the standing stones, the barbed wire fences.

Between eight and nine hundred thousand would perish here, including the Jews of Warsaw.

Treblinka was one of four “pure” death camps in Poland

-it served only to murder.

DeathGas Chamber-Crematorium complex at Dora Slave

Labor Camp. Those too weak to work would find their way here. Germans used carbon monoxide, car exhaust (gassing vans), and finally Zyklon B upon their victims.

Carbon monoxide gas chamber at Majdanek Elsewhere in this building Zyklon B was also used to

kill. Nazis guards could watch the dying through barred windows.

Men await death inside of a gassing van.

This is the opening to one of the four gigantic gas chamber-crematoria complexes at Birkenau. Over

one million perished in the Auschwitz camps.

Period Photo of Crematorium Complex IV at Auschwitz

The Crematoriums

Burning site: The Nazis used truck frames to create human pyres to dispose of the dead bodies. The

fused, blackened material is all that remains.

HUMAN ASHESThis mound of ashes is about fifteen feet high and

one hundred-plus feet in diameter.

The words on the marker of this mass grave site at Bergen-Belsen reads: “Here lies 2500 dead.”

When the British troops arrived they were amazed and outraged at what they found.

They set about forcing the Nazi guards and local townspeople to view and then bury the dead.

AtrocitiesDissection Table

Adjacent to this room, on one side is a gas chamber, on the other, the ovens. In between victims would give up

their gold teeth.

Barbaric medical experiments, often without anesthetic and hope of recovery.

Death SquadsMen, women and children were force to dig large pits, only to find

that they had dug their own graves.

Hope & LiberationRetreating Germans left boxcars in the camps. Some of them

empty, some of them full.

Those liberated rejoiced at the sight pf American and Soviet troops.

Justice