The holocaust

JUDY FLORES MATERIALS

1 The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

2 During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST? 3 In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every

three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia1 Program.

4 As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia2 for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious

1 The act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment.

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dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE "FINAL SOLUTION" 5 In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos3, transit camps4, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.

6 Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized

battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities.

THE END OF THE HOLOCAUST 7 In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called “death marches,” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to

2 The intellectual elite of a society.3 a section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there especially because of social, economic, or legal pressure.4 Transit camps were places to hold people until they could be shipped off to other camps such as execution or forced-labor camps.

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another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.

8 In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP)

camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely.

A. After Reading: Answer the Following Questions:

1. When speaking about the "Holocaust," what time period are we referring to?

2. What is the meaning of holocaust?

3. Who are the Nazi and what were their believes?

4. Name the groups involved in the holocaust.

5. Why were the Jews singled out for extermination?

6. How many Jews were able to escape from Europe prior to the Holocaust?

7. What is death marches?

The Thesis Statement is that sentence or two in your text that contains the focus of the story and tells the reader what the story is going to be about

B. Finding the Thesis Statement:

Write a sentence from the first paragraph that tells the reader what the story is about. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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________________________________________________________________________

C. Match: match column A with the correct answer in column B

Column A Column B

____1. grounds a. hunger

____2. deemed b. main concern

____3. Euthanasia c. dictatorship, oppression

____4. Tyranny d. To provide a basis for (a theory, for example)

____5. disabled e. relating to, or characteristic of race or races

____6. starvation f. to establish as a objective or goal.

____7. regime g. rules

____8. racial h. Impaired, as in physical functioning

____9. priority i. rebellious

____10. targeted j. the intellectual elite of a society.

____11. Intelligentsia k. think or believe

____12. Dissidents l. ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition

D. Vocabulary Building: Read the word that is in bold or expression in its context and match it with the correct meaning. Use a dictionary if necessary

____1. The Germans and their collaborators created ghettos.

a. prisoner

____2. For non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.

b. an alliance of powers, such as nations, to promote mutual interests and policies.

____3. The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews.

c. way, road

____4. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish d. to take the greatest possible advantage, it

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Polish intelligentsia. could be in a job or intellectually.

____5. The countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps.

e. a section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there especially because of social, economic, or legal pressure

____6. SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches.

f. harassment, maltreatment

____7. Concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another.

g. intense hate or hostility.

____8. Police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps.

h. support

____9. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish.

i. An official who is rigidly devoted to the details of administrative procedure

____10. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-supported by abuse and murder of approximately six million Jews

j. terrible, awful

____11. My brother asked me to sponsor him; he's running a marathon for the charity children in need.

k. to overwhelm

____12. Most Jews worked and often died under deplorable conditions.

l. the intellectual elite of a society.

E. Cognates are words that have similar pronunciations and spellings in both

languages (English and Spanish), and frequently have the same meaning.

There are thousands of cognates shared by English and Spanish. Many of

these are words with Latin or Greek origins and words that have prefixes and

suffixes derived from these ancient languages

Example: Destruction (English) Destrucción (Spanish)

Look back at the stories and find 10 words that have similar meaning in

Spanish

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1. ______________________ 6._______________________

2._______________________ 7._______________________

3._______________________ 8._______________________

4________________________ 9._______________________

5________________________ 10.______________________

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F. Scramble words: Look back at the vocabulary words and write down the correct form.

Unscramble each of the clue words.

Take the letters that appear in boxes and unscramble them for the final message. Clue for the phrase: look back at the text. It is the meaning of an important word in the text.

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Until recently, the story of the children of the Holocaust was rarely told. Here are accounts of the the war-time experiences of three child survivors: 5-year-old Lili, who was separated from her family and hidden in a convent; 7-year-old Krystyna, who lived for 14 months in a sewer, never seeing the light of day; and 14-year-old Alexander, who learned about death on a fateful day in the ghetto. These survivors speak for their friends and siblings -- the one-and-a-half million children who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Beyond Secret TearsI was 4 years old and my brother was 5-1/2 years old when we were first separated from our parents and placed in a Protestant orphanage in Belgium. I was a depressed and confused child, but with the passing of time, I began to believe that all children lived away from their parents.

Krystyna's StoryWhen Daddy found out that there would be a liquidation of the Ghetto, we hid in the cellar. I was 7 years old then and I knew about everything. Later

we headed for the sewer. It was very wet and dark.

My First KaddishAt lunch time, I sat at the roadside with Willy, the other Jewish carpenter. A passing Ukrainian peasant warned, "They are killing the Jews in town. Why aren't you boys hiding?" "Killing Jews? What are you saying?" I asked in disbelief. "Look, there," he said, "see for yourself."

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/children_main1.asp

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http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/children_main1.asp

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/story_first_kaddish4.asp

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/story_krystyna3.asp

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/story_beyond_tears2.asp

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/story_beyond_tears.asp

http://www.adl.org/children_holocaust/story_krystyna.asp

Documents

The holocaust