The Holocaust:an overview

A framework for examining the Holocaust… Exclusion:You have no right to live among us as Jews.1933-39

Expulsion:You have no right to live among us.1939-41

Extermination:You have no right to live.1941-45

The people involved… Victims – about 6 million Perpetrators – about 200,000 Bystanders – millions?

The beginnings of anti-Semitism

Early C15th fresco depicting the crucifixion of Christ

An engraving from Regensburg, 1476, alleging ritual murder of Christian children by Jews.

Le Rire magazine, 1898, depicting the Jewish banker Rothschild as master of the world

“The Sin Against the Blood”, 1917. Sold 260,000 copies!

“Germans, think about it!” (1923) Phillip Scheidermann (SD) and Matthias Erzberger (Catholic

Centre Party, supported by wealthy Jews and the revolution in the background.

The Legal Framework for Exclusion

1 April 1933: Boycott against Jewish shops.

7 April 1933: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

20 August 1935: The Nuremberg Laws.

14 November 1935: Nuremberg Laws 1st amendment.

10 November 1938: Kristallnacht.

12 November 1938: Regulation for the Elimination of the Jews from the Economic Life of Germany.

Exclusion and inclusion in the Volksgemeinschaft

Triumph of the Will

1934 Party Rally in Nuremberg Directed by Leni Riefenstahl Widespread acclaim throughout Europe. Propaganda or documentary?

The Holocaust The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic

persecution and annihilation of 6 million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

This genocide also included Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) peoples.

Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled adults and children, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered oppression and death.

The “Master Race”

Nazis believed Jews Slavs Roma (Gypsies) the disabled

were a serious biological threat to the purity of the German race. They referred to themselves as the master race or Herrenvolk.The so-called inferior races were untermenschen, or subhuman.

The “Master Race” By using a combination of

propaganda, terror, legislation and coercion, the Nazis were able to persuade a majority of the German population to support their policies.

The Jews Between 1933 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations

discriminated against Jews and made daily life increasingly difficult for them.

The Nazis wanted Jews to emigrate from Germany, but there were tight restrictions on what they could take with them and all countries around the world placed strict quotas on the number of Jews they would accept.

The Ghettoes Following the invasion of

Poland (1939), three million Polish Jews were forced into approximately 400 newly established ghettos, where they were segregated from the rest of the population. Starvation, overcrowding, exposure to cold, and contagious diseases killed tens of thousands of people.

The Ghettoes The ghettos also provided a forced labour pool for the

Germans, and many forced laborers (who worked on road gangs, in construction, or other hard labor related to the German war effort) died from exhaustion or maltreatment. (Below: Labourers from the Warsaw Ghetto)

The German Conquest In the months following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet

Union (1941), Jews, political leaders, Communists, and many Gypsies were killed in mass executions. The overwhelming majority of those killed were Jews.

The Einsatzgruppen These murders were carried out at

improvised sites throughout Poland, the Soviet Union and Baltic states by members of mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen SS) who followed in the wake of the invading Germany army.

Concentration Camp System

World War II brought major changes to the concentration camp system. Large numbers of new prisoners, deported from all German-occupied countries, now flooded the camps.

The Ghettoes Between 1942 and 1944, the Germans moved to eliminate the

ghettos in occupied Poland and elsewhere, deporting ghetto residents to “extermination camps” -- killing centers equipped with gassing facilities -- located in Poland.

The Extermination Camps

Chelmno was the first camp in which mass executions were carried out by gas, piped into mobile gas vans; 320,000 people were killed there between December 1941 and March 1943 and through June to July 1944.

The Extermination Camps A killing center using gas vans and later

gas chambers operated at Belzec, where more than 600,000 people were killed between May 1942 and August 1943.

The Extermination Camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also served as a concentration

camp and slave labor camp, became the killing center where the largest numbers of European Jews and Gypsies were killed.

More than 1.25 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 9 out of 10 of them Jews.

Liberation The extermination camps were liberated by Soviet troops

during 1944-45 as they inflicted defeat upon the Germans.

The suffering did not end for many prisoners, who were forced by their retreating guards to walk back to Germany. These forced marches are known as the Death Marches because over two-thirds of prisoners died in the process.

Studying theHolocaust

Reich Documentation Centre in the unfinished Congress Hall.

Wannsee House