Holocaust:

The

Final

Solution

Holocaust

1. The Nuremberg Laws2. The Final Solution3. Final Solution in Action4. Ghettos – Warsaw Ghetto and Einsatzgruppen5. Concentration Camps6. Death Camps7. Liberation8. Nuremberg Trials9. Cost of the Holocaust

Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race

These were laws the the Nazis Party established to strip Jews of their German citizenship and forbid marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

Chart used to determine if a person was a Jew or not. Had to have four white circles to be considered a German citizen

• Chart issued by the Nazis to help bureaucrats and administrators distinguish Jews from Mischlinge (Germans of mixed race) and Aryans. The white figures represent Aryans, the black figures represent Jews and the shaded figures represent Mischlinge.

Laws looked back three generations:* A Jew was someone who had two full Jewish grandparents * Belonged to the Jewish religious community when the law was promulgated September 15, 1935* married to a Jew or was the offspring of a marriage contracted with a Jew after September 15, 1935* Born out of wedlock after July 31, 1936, the offspring of extramarital relations with a Jew.

Anyone who was one-eighth or one-sixteenth Jewish-with one Jewish great-grandparent or great-great-grandparent-would be considered as of German blood.

Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg laws enacted between 1933 and 1935 set the Jews (and other non-Aryans and non-Germans) apart from the Germans legally, politically, socially, and economically.

They lost all access to the law and become playthings for the secret police

Jewish business vandalized by Nazis

Nuremberg Laws

By 1935, the Jews and non-Germans had been totally disenfranchised.

The Nuremberg laws foreshadowed the dark path towards which Hitler was leading Germany. Hitler stated, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was, “an attempt to regulate by law a problem that, in the event of repeated failure, would have to be transferred by law to the National Socialist Party for the Final Solution.“

As the Nuremberg laws went into effect, the Jews found themselves increasingly under the jurisdiction of the state as well as of the SS.

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)November 9 and 10th, 1938. Organized attack on all Jewish people throughout Germany took place.

Started over a Jewish teenager who killed a German Officer.

Business, Synagogues, and homes were looted and destroyed by the Nazis.

100s of Jews were killed

Over 30,000 were taken to concentration camps

Over 1000 Synagogues were burned in one day

Cities were synagogues were burned to the ground

The Final Solution

The Final Solution

Proposed at the Wannsee Conference and later instituted by Hitler

Brutal plan to remove all “non-Aryans” (especially Jews)

Carried out plan by furthering anti-Semetic (those from the Middle East – Ethiopians, North Africans, & Jews) views already existing in Germany

Nazis take control of govt. in 1933 & this plan begins to be instituted

Final Solution in Action

Final Solution in Action

SA – police unit formed by the Nazi party to silence opposition (primarily Jews)

SS – formed by Hitler, elite guard that became the private army of the Nazis

SS Women

Final Solution in Action Gestapo – Secret State Police, formed to hunt down

those who did not follow the new Nazi laws or who were considered political enemies

Final Solution in Action Hitler got the approval to open such places as the ghettos,

concentration and death camps by using propaganda such as newspapers to get the approval of the public

this issue of The Sturmer, a popular newspaper at the time, contains an article which names the Jews as ritual murderers of the non-Jews

Final Solution in Action Nuremberg Laws – stripped Jews of German citizenship and forbade

marriage between Jews & non-Jews Many Jewish business owners were forced out of business and many

others lost jobs and were forced into Ghettos

A Jewish family in Amsterdam is uprooted from their home

notice the star on the clothes

these were often used to show to anyone that you were a Jew

Ghettos

Ghettos Ghettos were the

first form of separation to be used by the Nazis and Hitler (Concentration and Death Camps were used later)

A picture of the Warsaw Ghetto – the largest and the most famous of the ghettos in all of Nazi territory

The dotted line indicates the wall

A wooden bridge for Jewish pedestrians passing over a street in the "Aryan" 

area and connecting two parts of the Lodz ghetto.

Location of Ghettos

Ghettos Ghettos were city

districts in which the Nazis forced the Jews to live in order to separate the Jews from other Jews and from non-Jews

The Jews lived in extremely miserable conditions in the ghettos

Warsaw Ghetto - Children eating in the street

People too hungry and weak to walk died in the streets surrounded by loved ones that were helpless to do anything about it.

Weak and dead people lined the streets of the ghettos

Warsaw Ghetto

The city of Warsaw is the capital of Poland

The highest concentration of Jews lived in this city

The Ghetto in Warsaw was established in 1940

It covered only 1.3 square miles but housed over 450,000 Jews

In one month alone, 5,100 Jews died because of poor living conditions

← the solid line indicates where the wall was located

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over 10

feet high, topped with barbed wire, and closely guarded

Eventually all the Ghettos were closed and the Jews were moved to concentration or death camps.

Einsatzgruppen Einsatzgruppen – during

the ghetto phase of Hitler’s plan, killing units sent to racially purify the Eastern European front for the Nazis

map of a tally of the Einsatzgruppen’s work

these killing units were not efficient enough for Hitler, and so the development of the camps came about

The Einsatzgruppen would execute entire villages of Jewish people.

Women and children were lined up in front of large pits and shot. These pits became mass graves for thousands of Jews across Poland and Russia.

Einsatzagruppen

• When they came for the Jews, I was silent because I was not a Jew.

• When they came for the Gypsies, I was silent because I was not a Gypsy.

• When they came for the Homosexuals, I was silent because I was not a

homosexual. • When they came for the Catholics, I was

silent because I was not a Catholic. • When they came for me, I cried for help,

but there was no one left to help me.

Einsatzgruppen

These mobile killing squads murdered more than one million Jews and thousands of Gypsies and Disabled people across Eastern Europe.

Ordinary men made up the Einsatzgruppen

Concentration Camps

Concentration Camps

Concentration

Camps –

Places where

Jews, law

breakers, and

political

prisoners were

confined

(usually under

harsh

conditions)

Concentration Camps

The first Concentration Camp, Dachau, was opened in 1933

here can be seen the leader of the SS, Himmler, visiting Dachau

Concentration Camps

Arrival at the train station at Auschwitz

some are selected to work while others go directly to the gas chamber

Concentration Camps

Prisoners were first given tattoos so that it was easier for the Nazis to keep track of them

Concentration Camps

Later, many others were placed in the camps who were considered undesirable (ex. Homeless, homosexuals, people with mental & physical disabilities, etc.)

The Concentration Camps were filled to capacity after the Nazis invaded Poland, putting 2 million more Jews under the control of the Nazis

Basic layout of a Concentration Camp – Auschwitz/Birkenau

Concentration Camps

Jewish prisoners being led into a Concentration Camp

Concentration Camps Roll Call - Morning count of the prisoners

Concentration Camps

Concentration Camps were places that were used as stopping points for those moving on to the death camps

Some prisoners were kept in the camps and were forced to slave labor for the Nazis as in this picture of the rock quarry at Mauthausen

Prisoners here were forced to work with their bare hands as one of the many tortures and the goal was often to try to work the prisoners to death

Concentration Camps Another group of quarry workers

Concentration Camps

The early camps were used mostly for slave labor

Prisoners built the camps, provided construction labor, worked in administration, worked outdoors in quarries and sand gravel pits, or worked in armaments factories to make weapons for the German army

Concentration Camps

Hard at work at Dachau

Concentration Camps

Dachau – prisoners forced to stand for hours on end as punishment

Concentration Camps Prisoner who didn’t quite make it to freedom

Concentration Camps There were many other ways of denoting that one was a Jew

here is a chart describing different patches to be worn for various reasons

categories on top: politicals, professional criminals, emigrants, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, and asocials

categories on the side: basic color, multiple offenders, prisoners in punishment battalions, Jews, along with special badges for racial law violations and nationalities

Concentration Camps More symbols Jews were forced to wear

← yellow star of David

GhettoStar

↑ Ghetto Worker

Concentration Camps All concentration camps had basic features: Entrance

“Hells Gate” - Entrance at Auschwitz/Birkenau

Concentration Camps

Fences and guard towers to make escape impossible

Concentration Camps Barracks – where people were housed

Women’s Barracks at Auschwitz/Birkenau

Concentration Camps Latrines – places to freshen up and go to the bathroom

Death Camps

Death Camps

Some Concentration Camps were converted to Death Camps towards the end of the war and other camps, such as Auschwitz, were nothing but death camps

The name implies what took place at the camps

Work ceased to take place and people (mainly Jews) were sent to these camps simply to die

Location of Death Camps

Death Camps

Some unique features of the Death Camps

“The Pond” – Auschwitz/ Birkenau

Where the ashes of thousands of bodies of those, mostly Jews, were dumped after being burned

Death Camps Mauthausen – “The Stairs of

Death”

prisoners were often forced to climb the grueling 186 stairs with stone blocks on their backs

most did this until their death

those who survived were forced to jump from what was termed “The Parachute Jump” located at the top of the stairs

Death Camps Mauthausen – “The Parachute Jump”

the destination of those who survived the climb of “The Stairs of Death”

thousands were forced to jump, despite the name, no parachutes were used

Some however, chose freely to jump rather than endure any more torture in the camp

Death Camps

Mauthausen – “The Dissecting Table”

SS doctors often removed the internal organs of their patients in “experiments” performed on this table

here they also skinned prisoners with interesting tattoos and sold the skin as book covers, gloves, luggage, and lamp shades

Death Camps

And also crematoriums – where mass numbers of dead were burned

photo of survivors in Mauthausen showing their liberators the ovens

Death Camps And often gas chambers where mass murdering, also known

as genocide, took place

Gas chamber at Mauthausen

The SS would cram into this room 120 people at a time, the room would then be filled with carbon dioxide,

The people would suffocate to death

Death Camps

picture of the shoes of the victims of one day’s worth of gassing

there are about 25,000 pairs of shoes here

Death Camps

A mother and children on their way to the gas chambers

Death Camps One of many mass executions at the camps

A man waits to be shot in the back of head by a Nazi officer

Death Camps

A mass grave at Bergen-Belsen

Death Camps A cremation pit at Auschwitz

Death Camps A hanging at Auschwitz – another common form of execution

Liberation

Liberation In 1945, the U.S. along with many other allies, marched

on Germany and freed those being held in the camps

Prisoners were so weak when the Allied troops arrived that many of them were not able to get out of their bunks.

Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials Series of trials held 1945 to punish the Nazi war criminals

High ranking Nazi officials on trial before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945

Nuremberg Trials

Altogether, 34 “major” offenders were tried at the trials for “crimes against humanity” (which involved murder, extermination, enslavement, and persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds)

Cost of the Holocaust

Cost of the Holocaust

Cost of the Holocaust

The End