The Jewish Holocaust The Shoah

1. The Jewish HolocaustThe Shoah History 12 Ms Leslie

2. Definition • destruction or slaughter on a mass scale • Destruction by fire

3. "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." ~ Heine • One century later, Heine's books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis in Berlin's Opernplatz. • Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ Santayana

4. Background to anti-Semitism: 1. It’s been around since before Christianity 2. Judaism rejects the worshiping of idols which alienated other cultures. 3. Angered the Romans be refusing to worship the emperor 4. Christians persecute the Jews for being the Killers of Christ 5. 12th Century were blamed for the murder of Christian Children during Jewish Passover 6. Jews were denied rights accorded of their Christian neighbours and had to wear identifying badges 7. Some Jews were forced into ghettos or denied the right to own land 8. Often Jews were forced from one place to find homes elsewhere.

5. Circa 1900 in Germany, petition gets over 225,000 signatures take away the Jews’ right to vote • Czarist Russia = pogroms • Bolsheviks accused of being Jews • Large Anti-Semitic movement in France in the early 20th century

6. Germany 1933-39 • Nuremberg Laws 1935 • First concentration camp = Dachau in 1933 • May 10, 1933 - 20,000 books burned • Kristallnacht

7. Jewish Ghettos 1939-41 • a part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups. • Has been happening for centuries • Difference = Nazi ghettos are preparation for extermination

8. First steps • After Invasion of Poland - 3.5 million Jews at mercy of the Einsatzgruppen • Special SS division for getting rid of ‘undesirables’ • Started rounding up ‘undersirables’ - Final Solution does not start until 1942

9. Polish Ghettos • Poles told that Jews were natural carriers of all types of diseases, especially typhus, and that it was necessary to isolate Jews. • The five major ghettos were located in Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, and Lvov. • the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945

12. Larger cities = walled in ghettos • Jews were not allowed to leave under penalty of death • Smallest = 3,000 • Largest (Warsaw) = 400,000

13. Ghetto Life • Filthy, poor sanitation • Over crowding - many families in one room • Rampant disease • No fuel = Cold winters • Starvation • Evacuation of ghettos in 1942, empty by 1944

14. Children smuggling despite death penalty

15. Building of the wall

16. Warsaw = 37% of pop. In 4.6% of area

17. Inspecting the wall

18. Homeless Children

19. Forced labour - Metal shop

20. Forced labour - sewing

21. Hungry children - only 300 calories a day.

22. The Camps 1941-42 • concentration camps, forced labor camps, extermination or death camps, transit camps, and prisoner-of-war camps • Dachau - the first - for political opponents. • Gradually started imprisoning Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, dissenting clergy, homosexuals

24. Death Camps • Auschwitz-Birkenau Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Lublin (also called Majdanek), and Chelmno • Chelmno started in 1941, the rest in 1942.

25. The Final Solution • As we walked down the main roadway of the camp, we were cheered by the internees, and for the first time we saw their condition. A great number were little more than living skeletons. There were men and women lying in heaps on both sides of the track. Others were walking slowly and aimlessly about, vacant expressions on their starved faces. ~ Coloner Tayler - liberator of Bergen Belsen

26. The outside world reacted with horror and indignation • This wasn’t even an extermination camp, it was a sick camp.

27. The beginning • January 30, 1939, Hitler announced in a new Europe the Jews would be destroyed - did not elaborate • Talked about moving the all to Madagascar • Solidified plans with Himmler and Heydrich after the invasion of Russia

28. No written order exists - Hitler rarely made written orders for things of importance. • Final solution included all Jews of Europe and the UK.

29. Einsatzgruppen • Created May 1941 to exterminate the Jews. • German troops, auxiliary police, Ukrainian and Baltic volunteers. • No shortage of willing volunteers. - massive increase in pay, special leave and share in the loot. • In 4 months 600,000 Jews are killed

30. Started with shootings • Made Jews did their own graves. • Babi Yar - Sept 29-30, 33,000 Jews killed in a single night outside of Kiev. Largest single massacre of the holocaust

31. [O]ne after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and over garments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him.

36. Wansee Conference • Jan 20, 1942 • When the Final Solution (Endlosung) was determined • Tallied up 11,000,000 Jews in Europe • Planned slave labour and extermination

37. "Europe would be combed of Jews from east to west," Heydrich stated. • Minutes kept with code words • "...eliminated by natural causes," = death by hard labor and starvation. • "...treated accordingly," "special treatment" and "special actions" = SS firing squads or death by gassing

38. Methods of death • Chelmno = Carbon monoxide vans • Einstazgruppen = bullets • These methods deems too slow • News camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka use poison gass

39. Treblinka = gas 200 at a time • Largest camp = Auschwitz. • Can take 2,000 victims at a time • Death in only 20 mins

40. Zyklon B • Pesticide in pellet form • dumped into the chambers via openings in the ceiling. • The pellets would then vaporize, giving off a noticeable bitter almond odor. • Upon being breathed in, the vapors combined with red blood cells, depriving the human body of vital oxygen, causing unconsciousness, and then death through oxygen starvation.

41. Johann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives." When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.

42. Rudolf Hoess, at his war-crimes tribunal said: • It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the chambers, according to climatic conditions. We knew the people were dead because their screaming stopped…After the bodies were removed out special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.

43. Empty zyklon b cans

44. Mass transports to Auschwitz began March 1942 • 2 million murdered there • Medical experiments

45. Getting rid of the evidence • Cremation • Ashes scattered in country side/rivers • Clothing/gold recycled for war machine

46. The importance of the operation to Hitler and the Nazi leadership is evident when one considered that the transportation of Jews to the death camps was given higher priority that the transportation of war materials.

47. With defeat…. • Germans start to shut down death camps in 1943. Still have impressive extermination figures • Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibor (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (also called Majdanek, 50,000 Jews).

49. Auschwitz stays open until summer of 1944. • Prisoners force to walk into central Germany. • These ‘death marches’ kills thousands.

50. Resistance 1942-44 • Partisans - hid in the Russian forests • Acts of sabotage • Warsaw uprising - after 400,000 Jews deported, 60,000 rebelled. • The revolt lasted 1 month and thousands more killed as a result.