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The Holocaust. Ch. 18, Sec 3. Jews persecuted in Europe since mid-1800s with rise of anti- S emitism . Discrimination, hostility to Jews. After WWI, many (including Hitler) blamed Jews for German loss, Depression. Helped increase pride of “real” Germans. Persecution under Hitler.
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The Holocaust Ch. 18, Sec 3
Jews persecuted in Europe since mid-1800s with rise of anti-Semitism. • Discrimination, hostility to Jews. • After WWI, many (including Hitler) blamed Jews for German loss, Depression. • Helped increase pride of “real” Germans.
Persecution under Hitler • 1933-Hitler takes power, begins official persecution of Jews. • Became known as Holocaust. • Attacks started slowly, grew quickly. • Boycotts of Jewish businesses. • 1935-Nuremberg laws stripped Jews of citizenship, forbade marriage to non-Jews. • Radio, newspapers constantly attacked, mocked Jews. • Had to sell businesses to non-Jews cheap. • Jewish doctors, lawyers could not work for non-Jews. • Jewish students expelled from all schools.
Forced to sew yellow Star of David on clothes. • Many Jews believed they could live through Hitler until he lost power. • Many others fled Germany as immigrants or refugees. • As more & more Jews fled, other countries (including USA) refused to let them in, due to Depression. • November 9, 1938-Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass). • Nazi gov’t & citizens attacked Jewish stores, synagogues, homes, burning & destroying. • Thousands arrested. • Jews forced to pay fines to gov’t for cleanup.
After Kristallnacht, Jews rounded up, sent to concentration camps. • Other “undesirables”-homeless, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, political opponents. • Used as slave labor for war factories. • When Poland fell, Polish Jews rounded up, put in ghettos. • Biggest-Warsaw ghetto-400,000 Jews (30% of Warsaw’s population crammed into 3% of city. • Denied food, medical care, thousands died monthly.
After 1941, Hitler unleashed Einsatzgruppen. • Mobile killing squads-targeted Communist leaders, all Jews in German-occupied lands. • Firing squads. • Hitler needed to kill more Jews faster. • Jan. 1942-Wannsee Conference. • “Final Solution to Jewish question”. • Use concentration camps to “liquidate” Jews. • Genocide-deliberate destruction of an entire ethnic or cultural group.
Jan. 1942-camps began extermination, starting at Auschwitz. • Used Zyklon B cyanide gas, in disguised shower rooms. • 6 death camps in Poland. • Jews from western Europe shipped in cattle cars to camps. • Inspected-fit worked as slave labor, all others executed on arrival. • ID numbers tattooed on arms. • Striped uniforms, starvation diet, overcrowded barracks. • At Auschwitz, 12,000/day killed & cremated.
Jews did fight back. • Joined resistance groups, rioted in Treblinka camp so fiercely Treblinka had to be closed (1943). • Biggest uprising in Warsaw ghetto, crushed by Nazis. • 1944-FDR started War Refugee Board-helped save & relocate 200,000 people. • Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews by giving passports. • Late 1944-Allies began to liberate camps, world found out how evil Nazis were.
Oskar Schindler Raoul Wallenberg
Nazis killed 6 million Jews in Holocaust. • 2/3 of all Jews in Europe. • 5-6 million others also killed. • After war, Allies held Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. • 24 top Nazis, camp commanders, guards tried. • 12 executed. • “Just following orders” was not an excuse.