The Jews 1940 - 1945

1. The Jews 1940 - 1945 The Holocaust

2. . How would you react if you saw the enemy soldiers appear suddenly on your street? • What would you do if your neighborhood was surrounded by the enemy troops blocking your way out?

3. What would you do if soldiers with rifles and sub-machine guns knocked on your door ordering you to come out?

4. Would you have helped the Jews in such dangerous times? • Would you have hidden the Jews in your house?

5. Prelude to the Final Solution • When Hitler seized power in 1933 he used his new powers under the ‘Enabling Law’ to begin his attack on the Jews. • In 1938, the Nazi attack on the Jews changed and became more violent with Himmler launching Kristallnacht on 11th November 1938. • By 1939, half of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had emigrated to escape Nazi persecution.

6. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland which had a much larger population of 3 million Jews. In 1941, Germany invaded Russia which had a population of 5 million Jews. Prelude to the Final Solution

7. Change of Tactics: Einsatzgruppen • Eichman sent four specially trained SS units called “Einsatzgruppen battalions” into German occupied territory and shot at least 1 million Jews. • Victims were taken to deserted areas where they were made to dig their own graves and shot. • When the SS ran out of bullets they sometimes killed their victims using flame throwers.

8. How did the Nazi decide who was Jewish? • At the Wannsee conference it was decided that if one of person’s parents was Jewish, then they were Jewish. • However, if only one of their grandparents had been Jewish then they could be classified as being German. • In 1940, all Jews had to have their passports stamped with the letter ‘J’ and had to wear the yellow Star of David on their jacket or coat.

9. Defining Jew as a racial Group • Labeled property and businesses • Non Aryan= anyone w/Jewish parents or grandparents.

10. Reich Citizenship Law 1935 • 4 categories • Fully Jewish (at least 3 Jewish grandparents regardless of faith) • Mischling of the 1st Degree (2 Jewish Grandparents) treated as Jews • Mischling of the 2nd Degree 1 Jewish Grandparent (treated as Aryans) • Non-Jewish

11. Also targeted • Homosexuals • Slavs • Gypsies • Political Dissidents • Physical Handicaps

12. Madagascar Plan • French would give Madagascar to Germany • Germany would be given the right to install military bases on Madagascar • The 25,000 Europeans (mostly French) living on Madagascar would be removed • Jewish emigration was to be forced, not voluntary • The Jews on Madagascar would operate most local governmental functions but would be responsible to a German police governor • The entire emigration and colonization of Madagascar would be paid by Jewish possessions confiscated by the

13. T-4 Euthanasia Plan 1939 • “mercy Killing” • NUREMBERG LAWS: forced sterilization of the unfit • Carbon-monoxide chambers • Dec. 1939 – Aug. 1941 50,000- 60,000 Germans secretly killed by lethal injection or gassing

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

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

16. Eichmann and the Jews • Suggested use of ghettos • Developed special units called Einsatzgruppen Units: Came behind German units to exterminate Jews • Kept Records • End of War was finally tried and executed in 1962

17. Change of Tactics: Einsatzgruppen

18. Between 1939 and 1945 sixmillion Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of others, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled and the mentally ill.

19. The ‘Final Solution’ • In January 1942, Eichman decided to change tactics once again and called a special conference at Wannsee. • At this conference it was decided that the existing methods were too inefficient and that a new ‘Final Solution’ was necessary.

20. What was Known? • Info about the Nazi atrocities was known in great detail • 3,000 soldiers knew about killings and talked • German railway system was aware of the Jewish Transports • Private industries built; crematoriums, supplied gas

21. Nazis in charge • Adolph Eichmann: in charge of logistics, worked with foreign governments

22. Bankers and business leaders processed confiscated Jewish property • Populations around the camps saw prisoners and death marches • Italian officers witnessed • Resistance movements supplied info • Stream of intelligence

23. Why do you think that they located them here? Where were the Death Camps built? The work of the Einsatzgruppen

24. Types of Camps • Labor camps: concentration camps where interned inmates had to do hard physical labor under inhumane conditions and cruel treatment. Some of these camps were sub-camps of bigger camps, or "operational camps", established for a temporary need. • Transit and collection camps: camps where inmates were collected and routed to main camps, or temporarily held

25. POW camps: concentration camps where prisoners of war were held after capture. These POW's endured torture and liquidation on a large scale. • Camps for rehabilitation and re-education of Poles: camps where the intelligents of the ethnic Poles were held, and "re-educated" according to Nazi values as slaves

26. Hostage camps (or death camps): camps where hostages were held and killed as reprisals. • Extermination camps: These camps differed from the rest, since not all of them were also concentration camps. Of these, four were extermination camps, where all new-arrivals were simply killed

27. Children Dying of Starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto

28. SS Tactics: Dehumanisation • The SS guards who murdered the Jews were brainwashed with Anti-Semitic propaganda. • The Jews were transported in cattle cars in terrible conditions. • Naked, dirty and half starved people look like animals, which helped to reinforce the Nazi propaganda. • The SS used to train their new guards by encouraging them to set fire to a pit full of live victims – usually children.

29. Tactics: What happened to new arrivals? All new arrivals went through a process known as ‘selection.’ At Auschwitz the trains pulled into a mock up of a normal station. Mothers, children, the old & sick were sent straight to the ‘showers’ which were really the gas chambers. The Jews were helped off the cattle trucks by Jews who were specially selected to help the Nazis Deception & Selection The able bodied were sent to work camp were they were killed through a process known as ‘destruction through work.’ At some death camps the Nazis would play records of classical music to help calm down the new arrivals. At Auschwitz the new arrivals were calmed down by a Jewish orchestra playing classical music.

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

31. 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.

32. Entrance to Auschwitz Notice how it has been built to resemble a railway station

33. Why inaction? • Caution – US had been burned in WWI on false propaganda of atrocities • Option of emigrating to British Palestine was cut off by Arab pressures • US reluctance to publicize the atrocities against Jews • No dedicated administrative structure dedicated to rescue Europe’s Jews.

34. Auschwitz Orchestra

35. Map of Auschwitz New Arrivals ‘Showers’ ‘Destruction Through Work’

36. Auschwitz from the air Notice how the Death camp is set out like a factory complex The Nazis used industrial methods to murder the Jews and process their dead bodies

37. The Gas Chambers • The Nazis would force large groups of prisoners into small cement rooms and drop canisters of Zyklon B, or prussic acid, in its crystal form through small holes in the roof. • These gas chambers were sometimes disguised as showers or bathing houses. The SS would try and pack up to 2000 people into this gas chamber

38. Notice the Ovens easy located near the Gas Chambers The outside of the Gas Chamber

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. Processing the bodies • Specially selected Jews known as the sonderkommando were used to to remove the gold fillings and hair of people who had been gassed. • The Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed the dead bodies into the crematorium.

42. The Ovens at Dachau

43. Dead bodies waiting to be processed

44. Shoes waiting to be processed by the sonderkommando Taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz Museum. This represents one day's collection at the peak of the gassings, about twenty five thousand pairs.

45. 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%

46. Destruction Through Work This photo was taken by the Nazis to show just how you could quite literally work the fat of the Jews by feeding them 200 calories a day

47. Destruction Through Work Same group of Jews 6 weeks later

49. Josef Mengele • “Angel of Death” Mengele's experiments also included attempts to take one twin's eyeballs and attach them to the back of the other twin's head, changing eye colour by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs