The Holocaust 1933 - 1945

1. The Holocaust1933 - 1945 • The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. • Approximately 17 million people were killed during these 12 years Hitler had power.

2. Important Terms • Nazi –The govt. of Germany from 1933 – 1945. No opposition was permitted on pain of imprisonment or death. The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party"). • Aryan – tall, blond, blue-eyed people; Hitler believed Germans were the best example; there is no such thing. • Genocide – the deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire race of people by any means necessary. • Gestapo – the Nazi Secret Police • Fuhrer – German word for supreme leader – Adolf Hitler = “Der Fuhrer”

3. The Final Solution – “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” – the plan to murder all the Jews in Europe • Kapo– the leader of a Concentration Camp who was also a prisoner • Pogrom– a brief, planned, surpise attack on a defenseless Jewish community • SS officers – began as Hitler’s bodyguards; ran the Concentration Camps; grew into the most powerful organization in the Third Reich • Swastika– an ancient symbol for good luck dating back almost 6 thousand years; with a few small changes it became the symbol for Nazism • Third Reich – Reich means Empire in German. According to the Nazis, the First Reich was the period of Germany’s greatest power, the Holy Roman Empire from 962 – 1806; The Second Reich was its next period of great power from 1871 until the end of WWI in 1918; and Hitler’s Third Reich was supposed to last a thousand years.

4. The Holocaust • In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered. • The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people

5. Nazis • The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, were the perpetrators of the Holocaust. They used their belief in Lebensraum (expansion) as the excuse for their territorial conquest and subjugation of people they categorized as "Untermenschen" (inferior people).

6. Persecution • Before the Nazis began their mass slaughter of Jews, they created a number of laws that separated Jews from society. Especially potent was the law that forced all Jews to wear a yellow star upon their clothing. The Nazis also made laws that made it illegal for Jews to sit or eat in certain places and placed a boycott on Jewish-owned stores.

7. Dates to Remember • April 1, 1933 - the Nazis announce a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. • September 15, 1935 - The Nuremberg Laws began to exclude Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages/relationships between Jews and Germans. Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired them from civil service jobs (i.e. government jobs), made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from working on anyone other than Jewish patients. • 1937 – Nazi test poison gas on mentally handicapped people • During the night of November 9-10, 1938- "Kristallnacht" ("Night of Broken Glass"). This night of violence included the pillaging and burning of synagogues, breaking the windows of Jewish-owned businesses, the looting of these stores, and many Jews were physically attacked. Also, approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. • 1939 – Nazis invade Poland beginning WWII • After World War II started in 1939, the Nazis began ordering Jews to wear a yellow star of David on their clothing so that Jews could be easily recognized and targeted. • 1940 – beginning of evacuations to Auschwitz • 1942 – the “Final Solution” • 1944 – the last gassings • 1945 – Germany surrenders / Liberation (now what?)/ end WWII

8. Ghettos • Pushed out of their homes, Jews were then forced to move into tiny, overcrowded quarters in a small section of the city. These areas, cordoned off by walls and barbed wire, were known as ghettos. Each person was always awaiting the dreaded call for "resettlement."

9. Victims • The Nazis targeted Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, twins, and the disabled. Some of these people tried to hide from the Nazis, like Anne Frank and her family. A few were successful; most were not. Those whowere captured suffered sterilization, forced resettlement, separation from family and friends, beatings, torture, starvation, and/or death.

10. The Camps • Although the term "concentration camps" is often used to describe all Nazi camps, there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including transit camps, forced-labor camps, and death camps. In some of these camps there was at least a small chance to survive; while in others, there was no chance at all.

11. “Camps” • Life within Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk (no mattress or pillow). Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent. • At a number of Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will. • While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination camps (also known as death camps) were built for the sole purpose of killing large groups of people quickly and efficiently. • Prisoners transported to these extermination camps were told to undress to take a shower. Rather than a shower, the prisoners were herded into gas chambers and killed. • Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. It is estimated that 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz.

12. The Big Numbers • It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews. • The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe. • An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered

13. Resistance • Many people ask, "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" Well, they did. With limited weapons and at a severe disadvantage, they found creative ways to subvert the Nazi system. They worked with partisans in the forests, fought to the last man in the Warsaw Ghetto, revolted at the Sobibor death camp, and blew up gas chambers at Auschwitz

14. Anne Frank • During the two years and one month Anne Frank spent hiding in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam during World War II, she kept a diary. Anne Frank's diary, which was published by her father after the war and has been read by millions of people around the world, chronicles both the tensions and difficulties of living in such a confined space for that long a duration as well as Anne's struggles with becoming a teenager. Since the publication of her diary, Anne Frank has become a symbol of the children that were murdered in the Holocaust.

15. Overview of Anne Frank: • Anne Frank was born in Germany as the second child of Otto and Edith Frank. Anne's sister Margot was three years older. The Franks were a middle-class Jewish family whose ancestors had lived in Germany for centuries. The Franks considered Germany their home; thus it was a very difficult decision for them to leave Germany in 1933 and start a new life in the Netherlands, away from the anti-Semitism of the newly empowered Nazis. • After moving his family in with Edith's mother in Aachen, Germany, Otto Frank moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands in the summer of 1933 so that he could establish a business (a company which made and sold pectin - a product used to make jelly). The other members of the Frank family followed a bit later, with Anne being the last to arrive in Amsterdam in February 1934. • The Franks quickly settled into life in Amsterdam. While Otto Frank focused on building up his business, Anne and Margot started at their new schools and made a large circle of Jewish and non-Jewish friends. In 1939, Anne's maternal grandmother also fled Germany and lived with the Franks until her death in January 1942.

16. On May 10, 1940, Germany attacked the Netherlands. Five days later, the Netherlands officially surrendered. The Nazis were now in control of the Netherlands and quickly began issuing anti-Jewish laws and edicts. In addition to no longer being able to sit on park benches, go to public swimming pools, or take public transportation, Anne could no longer go to a school with non-Jews. In September 1941, Anne had to leave her school. In May 1942, a new edict forced all Jews over the age of six to wear a star of David on their clothes. • Since the persecution of Jews in Netherlands was extremely similar to the early persecution of Jews in Germany, the Franks could foresee that just like it had for the Jews in Germany, death and deportation was coming soon to Jews in the Netherlands. The Franks realized they needed to find a way to escape. Unable to leave from the Netherlands because the borders were closed, the Franks decided the only way to escape the Nazis was to go into hiding. Nearly a year before Anne received her diary, the Franks had begun organizing a hiding place. • For Anne's 13th birthday (June 12, 1942), she received a red-and-white-checkered autograph album that she decided to use as a diary. Until she went into hiding, Anne wrote in her diary about everyday life such as her friends, grades she received at school, even about playing ping pong.

17. The Franks had planned on moving to their hiding place on July 16, 1942, but their plans changed when Margot received a call-up notice on July 5, 1942. After packing their final items, the Franks left the following day. • Their hiding place, which Anne called “the Secret Annex,” was located in the upper-back portion of Otto Frank's business. On July 13, 1942 (seven days after the Franks arrived in the Annex), the van Pels family (called the van Daans in Anne's published diary) arrived at the Secret Annex to live. The last to arrive of the eight people to hide in the Secret Annex was the dentist Friedrich "Fritz" Pfeffer (called Albert Dussel in the diary) on November 16, 1942. • Anne continued writing her diary from her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Much of the diary is about the cramped and stifling living conditions as well as the personality conflicts between the eight that lived together in hiding. Also among the two years and one month that Anne lived in the Secret Annex, she wrote about her fears, her hopes, and her character. She felt misunderstood by those around her and was constantly trying to better herself.

18. Anne was 13 years old when she went into hiding and she was only 15 old when she was arrested. On the morning of August 4, 1944, around ten to ten-thirty in the morning, an SS officer and several Dutch Security Police members pulled up to 263 Prinsengracht. They went directly to the bookcase that hid the door to the Secret Annex and pried the door open. All eight people living in the Secret Annex were arrested and taken to Westerbork. Anne's diary lay on the ground and was collected and safely stored by MiepGies later that day.

19. On September 3, 1944, Anne and all those who had been hiding in the Secret Annex were shipped on the very last train leaving Westerbork for Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, the group was separated and several were soon transported to other camps. Anne and Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen at the end of October 1944. In late February or early March of 1945, Margot died of typhus, followed just a few days later by Anne, also from typhus. Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 12, 1945, just about a month after their deaths.