The Holocaust

1. The Holocaust

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

3. For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ -killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example. In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge. In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London. This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century, especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population was very large. After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed. Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.

4. Nazis Begin Persecution • Nuremberg Laws- Laws that denied German citizenship to Jews, banned marriages between Jews and non-Jews and segregated Jews at every level of society. • Wanted the “Final Solution” to get rid of Jews. • Propaganda produced intended to turn people against Jews.

5. Pre-war German Propaganda Anti-Jewish propaganda book "The Poisonous Mushroom” Germany, c. 1938.

6. Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between an "Aryan" and a black woman. The caption states: "The result! A loss of racial pride."

7. Kristallnacht • “Night of the Broken Glass” • Attacks on Jews in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. • Secret police and military units destroyed more than 1500 synagogues and 7500 Jewish owned businesses, killed more than 200 Jews and injured more than 600. Thousands were arrested.

9. Jewish Refugees Face Obstacles • Between 1933 and 1937 about 129,000 Jews fled Germany and Austria. (including Albert Einstein) • Because of the worldwide depression in the 1930s many Jews were not welcome in other countries. • Many were sent back to where they came from.

10. Concentration Camps Place where a groups of people were confined. Usually not designed to kill but rather make the members useful in the Third Reich. Tattooed numbers on arms and dressed in striped uniforms. Different colors worn by different groups. ex. Pink=homosexuals, Jews= yellow, red= political prisoners.

12. Many killed by unrestricted guards. • Starvation and disease was a problem • Medical experiments were also known to happen. • Mentally ill, too old, too young, and crippled were usually immediately sent to death.

14. A prisoner in a compression chamber loses consciousness (and later dies) during an experiment to determine altitudes at which aircraft crews could survive without oxygen. Dachau, Germany, 1942.

15. A Romani (Gypsy) victim of Nazi medical experiments to make seawater potable. Dachau concentration camp, Germany, 1944.

16. Percentage of Jews killed in each country AUSTRIA 35% POLAND 91% USSR 36% NORWAY 45% BELGIUM 45% LUXEMBOURG 55% ESTONIA 44% ROMANIA 84% A Total of 6,000,000 Jews HUNGARY 74% YUGOSLAVIA 81% BOHEMIA 60% LATVIA 84% NETHERLANDS 71% LITHUANIA 85% GERMANY 36% FRANCE 22% GREECE 87%

17. A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS.

18. Death Camps • Part of Hitler’s “Final Solution” • Plan was to exterminate 11,000,000 Jews. • Death camps are where individuals are taken to by exterminated (killed). • Auschwitz= Most well known • Victims were gassed, shot to death, and bodies were burned or buried in mass graves. • Included Jews, Catholics, prisoners of war, homosexuals, anyone opposing Hitler.

19. 16 of the 44 children taken from a French children’s home. They were sent to a concentration camp and later to Auschwitz. ONLY 1 SURVIVED A group of children at a concentration camp in Poland.

20. 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.

21. Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

22. Jewish women, some holding infants, are forced to wait in a line before their execution by Germans and Ukrainian collaborators.

23. A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive in the ravine after the mass execution.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn. After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken from victims at Buchenwald.

27. 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. 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.

28. Early Response • U.S. could have helped if we let more Jewish people come in to the country. • Why didn’t we help? Great Depression, Anti-Semitism, underestimation of Hitler.

29. U.S. Government Takes Action • War Refugee Board- 1944 FDR= saved thousands of Jews. • Stalin showed no concern about what Hitler was doing. • Camps were not military targets. We concentrated on defeating Hitler, not helping victims.

30. Allied Soldiers Liberate the Camps • Soldiers were unprepared for what they saw at the camps. • Many Americans did not realize the extent of the problem until after the camps were liberated. • Many Jews found refuge or home in the U.S. • President Truman immediately recognized the New Nation of Israel in 1948.

31. Have Any Genocides Occurred Since the Holocaust? • Holocaust refers specifically to the Jewish/Undesirables Genocide we have presented today • Genocide - mass murder of a group of people • 1988 Kurdish genocide in Turkey and Iraq • 1990 Rwandan genocide in Africa • 1991 – 1995 Bosnian genocide in Europe May we never let it happen again…