The Holocaust

1. The Holocaust Never Again

2. What do you know? • Ask yourself what you learned about the Holocaust in school. Do you feel you learned enough? Enough to teach it? • Do you feel this topic is for History teachers only?

3. 4 parts of the Holocaust • Pre-Nazi Germany and Europe • 1933-1939 • 1939-1945 • Post 1945

4. Pre-Nazi Germany and Europe • German society was at odds with itself. On the one hand The treaty of Versailles (agreement made at the end of WWI blaming Germany for the war and thus making them financially responsible for the reconstruction of Europe as well as removing parts of Germany and creating new sovereign countries), left Germany financially strained and emotionally drained. On the other hand, German artists, musicians, and writers were at the top of their game. Extremely popular among Europeans and Americans alike. • Tolerance was everywhere. Gay and “queer” culture abounded as did Jazz (black cultural influence). • Religion was something most older people worried about. This was true in most religious groups. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews were more interested in the atheism and socialism of the day than in the devout spirituality of the Victorians from the previous century. The 20th century was only 20 years old and it was booming with success and acceptance for everyone.

5. Before the Great Depression hit the world banks, Social Darwinism hit the world’s scientific minds. • Although first established in the late 1800s, it becomes increasingly popular in the early 20th century. So popular, in fact, that Fitzgerald mentions it in his novel The Great Gatsby. • Social Darwinsim is the belief that social policies and politics are directly linked to the theories of survival of the fittest thus making some societies better due to better “stock”. • Eugenics, a component of Social Darwinsim, is the medical and scientific theory that genetics can and should be altered in order to create a more perfect human.

7. Adolf Hitler did not invent either term, but used them fully to justify his actions. • Eugenics became the foundation of Nazi medicine and is the only true Nazi theory to have survived the war. It currently flourishes in the United States as some forms of preventive care and genetic testing of diseases such as cancer. • Social Darwinism became the foundation of the Nazi propaganda/educational media. This included the Nazi theater and film, print media, radio, and school curriculum departments. • They truly believed that Germans and other “Aryans” or Northern Europeans were more intelligent, more efficient, harder workers, and in better health i.e. a more perfect human than others. They also believed that inter-marriages with these lesser peoples had diluted and weakened the German blood lines which caused them to loose WWI and become impoverished and shamed.

8. 1933-1939 • Jan. 1933 Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany. He is leader of a small right-winged party known as the national Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi. He quickly moved to end the democracy in Germany and create dictatorship called a Fuhrer which suspended individual rights of speech, press, and assembly. • He creates special security forces in addition to the regular police- The Gestapo, Storm Troopers (SA), and the SS. • A few months later Hitler enacts the first of a series of racial purification laws. Jews, Roma (Gypsy), gays, Blacks, and the handicapped were a serious biological threat the purity of the German race. What Hitler called the master race. • Jews at the time made up less than 1% of the total German population (1933- 525,000 Jews in Germany). Nazis identified Jews as a race and classified them as inferior. • The new laws forced Jews out of any civil service, educational, legal, and medical positions. • In 1935 Jews officially became 2 class citizens with restricted mobility. These laws defined Jews not by their religion but by the religious affiliation of grandparents or great-grandparents. • Between 1937 and 1939 new laws restricted Jews even further, keeping them out of almost all public arenas including school, theaters, resorts, and sidewalks. Businesses and bank accounts were seized. And riots and beatings against Jews became commonplace. • Between 1935 and 1939 laws were passed to reduce and eliminate genetic “inferiors” through involuntary sterilization programs (320,000-350,000 individuals judged as physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation procedures of sterilization) including 500 African-German children. Blacks and Roma were also sterilized and prohibited from intermarrying with Germans. • Hitlers racial policies combined existing stereotypes and predjudices with pseudoscience to define certain groups as undesirable races prone to asocial or criminal behaviors thus justifying their anhialation.

9. 1939-1945 • This time period is marked by Germany’s “invasion” of many neighboring countries, although most of them, including Poland, had large portions of the population and or government that welcomed the Nazi arrival. • It is also a time of ghettoizing and “deporting” Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. • The Final Solution was put into practice as soon as Auschwitz was completed. It was a methodically run system of segregating Jews from their friends and neighbors in the “big ghetto” to the “little ghetto” where they stayed for a couple of weeks or just a few days and were then transported by cattle car to a death camp. Once at Auschwitz or one of its sister camps, “prisoners” segregated by gender, made to undress, leave all belongings and valuables (including gold teeth) behind in a pile. Few were selected for labor, most were selected for the gas chambers (disguised as showers) where Zyklon B gas (a pesticide) was released and asphyxiated the people. Those who were selected for labor were then exposed to malnourishment, exposure, epidemics, medical experimentation, torture, brutality, and routine selections for the gas chamber; many perished as a result. • The largest single mass deportation of Jews occurred between May and July 1944 when nearly 440,000 Jews were deported for extermination from Hungary. This was one of the final deportations to take place as Hungary was one of the last countries to join the Nazi empire and it occurred so close to the Soviet front reaching Nazi territory. The Hungarian deportation is also remarkable due to its swift execution and participation by average Hungarians in the identification and deportation of Jews from Budapest and other towns.

10. The War • It is important to note that the Allied powers, including the US, did not pursue a policy of search and rescue for the victims of the Holocaust. Winning the war was the priority, not stopping of the trains to Auschwitz. This included denial of visas to Jews attempting to flee Nazi Europe. • For the Germans winning the war was also the top priority, but it was the war against the Jews which was paramount. As the Allied forces progressed into Nazi territory, many outlying camps were evacuated in order to cover up any signs of genocide, but also to be able to finish the job. • Auschwitz was among these camps. It was evacuated by way of a Death march – a ten days walk in the snow to Dachau located in the center of Berlin. Many died during this treacherous march. Other camps, never intended for extermination purposes, such as Bergen-Belsen, became death camps due to mass shooting, burnings, and typhus. Anne Frank was among the victims. Two months after Anne died, Nazi Germany collapsed, the SS fled and the camps ceased to exist in the same capacity.

11. Nuremburg Trials • After the war, the world was outraged by what they were faced with- genocide. • In an attempt to bring justice back to the world after such a horrific human act as was the Holocaust, The Allied powers created a tribunal for crimes against humanity. It was the first of its kind and the first time a country would be judged on such terms. • It soon became apparent that this was not simply a state sanctioned atrocity, but one that was carried out by heads of states, the military, local police, and average citizens alike. • To this day it is very difficult to comprehend how a society as cultured and educated as was the Weimar Republic (Germany), could attend the Opera and simultaneously torture and murder their neighbors..

12. To understand what caused this in order to prevent it from happening again we must realize that: • The average Nazi was not a monster that had lost his humanity, but rather a human that had redefined what is meant to be human, so that some people had value and others did not; so that to kill Jews and other “undesirables” was not murder, but patriotic duty.

13. The Nazi

14. Ideaology

15. Nazi Philosophy • The individual did not matter • The Volk was everything. • The Volk (the people)was a key component to Hitler's ideal of Germany. It recalled a simple, pastoral life. • Productivity determined your worth as a person. • Aryans had the potential to be most productive. • Jews, Blacks, Gypsies, the disabled, and the feeble were burdens on society. • Hitler did not invent any of this. He simply expanded on ideas that were developing as a result of WWI and the Depression.

16. Main Players • Hitler- leader and founder • Goebbels- Director of propaganda, press and film departments in Nazi Germany. • Dr. Eichmann- Director of medical experimentation on Jews and Gypsies. • Dr. Mengele- Director of Eugenics (medical experiments on twins and pregnant women) • Himmler- military strategy • The SS- secret police (highest level and honor) • Gestapo- local police

17. Role of German people • Had been Anti-Semetic for centuries. • Believed in Social Darwinism. • Were eager to claim their status among European countries. • Eventually many Germans felt the Third Reich went too far, but no one spoke up. • Other countries were eager to prove their status as Aryans and so were often more brutal than the original Nazis.

18. The Righteous • Some people in Europe, like Raohl and Schindler and many others risked their lives to save Jewish people from the Nazis. • Israel honors these people’s commitment to TikkunOlam (the Jewish belief that to save a life is to save the world) by calling them The Righteous. • They have a special room in YadVashem (the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel).

19. Myths • Hitler was Jewish • Jews could save themselves if they converted or immigrated • There were no children in concentration camps • The Holocaust was the result of a crazy man’s dream. • The Holocaust happened because of anger and fear due to the Great Depression.

20. Holocaust Art • Hitler's ideas concerning music and art shaped the cultural atmosphere and political policies for all of Germany. • He decried the "degenerate" influence on German culture from Jews and Blacks, particularly through Jazz music, and stated his repugnance repeatedly. • Any artist who did not fit into the ideal of Volk was excluded. This meant that only German composers, Operas, artists, etc were acceptable forms of entertainment and culture. • True art as defined by Hitler was linked with the country life, with health, and with the Aryan race.

21. Examples Wagner’s Opera: Tristan Jews could not play German music as it would taint the purity of the sound. Most German art and film at the time was more propaganda than art form.

22. Hitler. Nuremberg speech, Sept. 11, 1935 • "Art is a noble mission. Those who have been chosen by destiny [Vorsehung] to reveal the soul of a people, to let it speak in stone or ring in sounds, live under a powerful, almighty, and all-pervading force. They will speak a language, regardless of whether others understand them. They will suffer hardship rather than become unfaithful to the star which guides them from within." --Hitler. Nuremberg speech, Sept. 11, 1935

23. Adolf Hitler's words are strangely prophetic. Professional and amateur artists of all genres recorded what they saw and experienced during the reign of the Third Reich. They went beyond simple protest against the hardships, misery and inhumanity to leave an eloquent account of their sufferings. The record left by ghetto dwellers, camp internees, and displaced persons create snapshots of life and death under Hitler. Inmate drawings and paintings speak eloquently of man's inhumanity and cruelty. The Nazis labeled this art "horror propaganda"; Holocaust writer Lawrence Langer calls it the "horror truth."

24. Art of the Camps and Ghettos • Moshe Rynecki was a painter whose work often directed attention to the persecution of the Jews. He lived in the Warsaw ghetto and died at Majdanek. • http://www.rynecki.org/ • Some inmate art was actually sanctioned by the camp or ghetto authorities. Preserved remnants of barracks decoration can still be viewed in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

25. Inmates who produced clandestine art did so at great risk to their lives. These artists used their talents to create works of art as an expression of their own humanity- something the Holocaust sought to destroy and or ignore. • When the liberation forces were examining the ghettos and camps, thousands of pictures drawn by children and adults were discovered. These images bear silent testimony to man's eternal need to create, and portray for future generations a way of living and dyingthat the Third Reich tried to hide.

27. Nazi Approved Art • "Divine destiny has given the German people everything in the person of one man. Not only does he possess strong and ingenious statesmanship, not only is he ingenious as a soldier, not only is he the first worker and the first economist among his people but, and this is perhaps his greatest strength, he is an artist. He came from art, he devoted himself to art, especially the art of architecture, this powerful creator of great buildings. And now he has also become the Reich's builder." • --Hakenkreuzbanner (The Swastika Flag), June 10, 1938

28. Art was considered to be one of the most important elements to strengthening the Third Reich and purifying the nation. • Political aims and artistic expression became one. • The task of art in the Third Reich was to shape the population's attitudes by carrying political messages with stereotyped concepts and art forms. • True art as defined by Hitler was linked with the country life, with health, and with the Aryan race. • Modern art, therefore, had no place in the Third Reich.

29. "We shall discover and encourage the artists who are able to impress upon the State of the German people the cultural stamp of the Germanic race . . . in their origin and in the picture which they present they are the expressions of the soul and the ideals of the community." (Hitler, Party Day speech, 1935; in Adam, 1992)

31. Holocaust Architecture: the camps • Architecture was Hitler's favorite art form. He viewed himself as the "master builder of the Third Reich." Among the surviving examples of Nazi architecture is the Olympic stadium complex in Berlin. • The Olympic games had been scheduled before Hitler came to power in 1933. He saw this event as a unique opportunity to play host to the world and to show Germany as a force to be reckoned with. He wanted Germany to be portrayed in the best possible light and removed all antisemitic slogans that had defaced the walls of public buildings. The stadium was built as a huge assembly place for hundreds of thousands of people to celebrate Nazi rituals. The art that accompanied this colossal building was no less magnificent.

32. Although all Nazi architecture was meant to show Nazi power, not all Nazi Architecture was beautiful.

33. The Olympic Stadium

34. http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/ • Concentration and Death camps were among the Nazi’s most amazing and gruesome buildings. They show a precision to detail and systematic, emotionally devoid, sense of hatred never before seen among peoples.

35. Holocaust Language • Words changed in meaning as a result of the Holocaust. • Degenerate art referred to art made by Jews and Blacks • Camps, Survivor, witness, testimony, tattoo and many others have been altered in meaning forever. • It is for this reason, that Holocaust art has become so important to the preservation of memory and to the expression of emotions connected to the Holocaust.

36. The Post-Holocaust World • Although generally silent about the Holocaust itself, philosophers, writers, and artists express their feelings via existentialist and modernist thoughts. • Existentialism- (philosophy /art/etc)- a philosophical and literary movement centered around the individual and the choices available to him. • Modernism- (in everyday art)- mostly an architectural and artistic movement, but also prevelant in literature and drama centered around scientific advancements and man’s ability to improve his life through science and technology. • Post-Modernism –(literature and art)- deconstructs in order to re-construct. Most educational theory today is post-modernist.

37. Holocaust Denial • The greatest form of Anti-Semitism today is in the form of Holocaust denial. • It can be seen in outright denial of it ever happening to believing it was a Jewish creation to blame the world for its destruction. • Most countries have no laws against such hate speech. Anyone can be a Holocaust denier, including college professors. • Iran’s president hosts a yearly “academic” conference on the topic. Academic is an oxymoronic term since all Holocaust deniers are basing their opinions on hate and myth and not on any historical or scientific evidence. • England and Germany are among the few nations that have made it illegal to deny the Holocaust.

38. Facts • 6 million Jews were murdered by German Nazis or neighboring fascist governments working with German Nazis. • 11 million people were killed in total as a result of Nazi laws, labor and death camps. • Gypsies, Gay men and Lesbian women were the next greatest target for the Nazi party. Often tortured and currently seldom recognized as valid victims of the Holocaust. • Blacks, the invalid, and political dissidents were also victims of the Holocaust. • Everyone had their own color triangle they had to wear on their chests. Jews were given two yellow triangles that formed a star of David. • Hitler was elected by regular people, who allowed their fears and their dislike of others to overpower their sense of morality. They allowed themselves to believe that not everyone is human on an equal playing field and that some “people” don’t deserve to live. • These people were essentially bullies who gained control of a country and created a social nightmare.