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 fire2. Greek word that means burnt whole or consumed by fire

Holocaust (hol·o·caust): n -   

1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire2. Greek word that means burnt whole or consumed by fire

Europe After WWI

Aryan RaceAryan 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.

Anti -SemitismAnti -SemitismThis is the term given to political, social and economic agitation against Jews. In simple terms it means ‘Hatred of Jews’.

Conditions in Germany at the end of WWI

Germany was a defeated nation Peace Treaty

requirements Stock Market Crash

Nazis and Germans are not the same Nazi Party German citizens

Photo credit: USHMM Photo Archives

Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

Adolf Hitler

Rise of the Nazi Party

courtesy of USH

MM

Photo A

rchives

Hitler’s PromisesBetter life

Germany great nation

Racial purity

Hitler Youth Parade

Hitler Youth march through Nuremberg, Germany past Nazi officials.

The Nuremberg LawsThe 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

Photo credits: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

Kristallnacht

“Night Of Broken Glass”

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

The Ghettos Starting in 1933, Nazi officials forced Jewish

citizens into “ghettos” in order to control the Jewish populations

The ghettos were usually in the poorest areas of a city, were dirty, frequently had no running water, or heat.

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: 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.

The camps were run by the S.S., Hitler’s elite squad of troops.

The most infamous of the concentration camps were Auschwitz and Dachau.

Dachau was the model for all other concentration camps, it opened in 1933.

Auschwitz was the largest and most deadly of the camps.

Between the two camps, millions of people were killed, and disposed of by the Nazis

The concentration camps followed Hitler’s Plan of the “Final Solution”: to exterminate all Jews from Europe.

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.

After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken from victims at Buchenwald.

Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn.

Even the very young…

Photo credit: German National Archives

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.

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.

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

As Allied forces pushed German troops back into German territory, Nazis increased their executions.

When the camps were freed by American and Russian troops, mass graves were discovered.

A Total of 6,000,000 Jews

Percentage of Jews killed in each country