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The Hitler Youth

A. Holocaust Begins

• Holocaust – Systematic mass slaughter of Jews and other groups judged inferior by the Nazis

• Hitler used Jews as scapegoats for all European problems

• Nuremberg Laws (1935) – Laws stating that Jews could not be German citizens and defined who was a Jew

• Hitler used the Nuremberg Laws as his first attempt to preserve his idea of a “Master Race”

• Social Darwinism – “Survival of the fittest”

• Hitler used these beliefs to argue that inferior people needed to be eliminated because he claimed that they were polluting the superior race

Primary Source – November 16, 1941

• The Jews are receiving a penalty that is certainly hard, but more than deserved. World Jewry erred in adding up the forces available to it for this war, and now is gradually experiencing the destruction that it planned for us, and would have carried out without a second thought if it had possessed the ability. It is perishing according its own law: ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ - Joseph Goebbels

Synagogues were used as storage warehouses.

Depiction of Jewish Man Circa 1930

Two Jewish students are humiliated in front of their whole class.

The writing on the board

proclaims “the Jew is our greatest enemy!

Beware of the Jew!"

Hitler’s War on the Jews

Purify German Culture By Burning Books

• Kristallnacht – “Night of Broken Glass” – Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues - Use assassination of Rath as an excuse

• 1939 – Millions of Jews tried to escape by leaving Germany

“Night of the Broken Glass”

• At first Hitler thought that emigration of Jews would end his “Jewish problem”

• Most major countries closed their doors and did not allow Jews to enter their country

B. Isolating the Jews• When emigration failed Hitler

ordered all Jews to move to certain towns

• Ghettos – Segregated Jewish areas

• Hoped that the Jews would die from starvation or disease

Thousands Arrested…

While Others Are Rounded Up…

All Jews would live here, sometimes with three or four

families in one apartment

Food was scarce as well as medicine and clothing.

Star of David

Jews were used in forced labor factories to produce

for the Nazis.

C. Final Solution

• Hitler grew impatient because Jews were not dying fast enough

• Final Solution – The systematical killing all Jews

• Heinrich Himmler – Head of the SS who developed the “Final Solution”

• Also called for the killing of Poles, Russians, homosexuals, insane people, and the disabled

Once ghettos would get too full, Jews would be

“deported” to other camps.

Most camps are run in the same order…

Prisoners arrive by Cattle Car

Once they arrived, they would be separate men from the

women and children

Or, they would be separated because they couldn’t work.

These belongings were stored for the Nazis to use.

Prisoners were then shaved (all camps) and tattooed (in most).

Prisoners were then led to shower rooms, which were either really

showers or gas chambers made to look like showers.

Final Solution

• “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”– Anne

Frank

D. Final Stage• Germans sent out death squads • Jews not killed by death squads were

sent to concentration camps• Jews unable to work were killed in huge

gas chambers or by machine guns – Germany companies competed to have their gas used for the killing

• Others were used as slaves forced to work 7 days a week

• Auschwitz – Largest extermination camp

• Crematoriums – Large ovens used to burn the bodies

• Nazi doctors also conducted experiments on healthy Jews

• Results in the death of more than 6 million Jews

• Over 60% of the world’s Jews were killed during the Holocaust

• Total death total is around 11 million• Just 1 out of every 16 Jewish children in

Europe survived the Holocaust