The Holocaust: An OVERVIEW

1. The Holocaust: An OVERVIEW Two German Jewish families at a prewar gathering. Only two of them survived Holocaust. Germany, 1928.

2. HITLER BECOMES A PROPHET • Hitler to Reichstag, January 30, 1939: “Today, I will again be a prophet. If international finance Jewry…should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

3. What was the Holocaust? Concepts: • The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution & annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Roma, people with disabilities living in institutions, Soviet prisoners of war , Soviet civilians, and Polish leadership elites were likewise targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny

4. What was the Holocaust? • The phrase Final Solution of the Jewish Question was code for the physical annihilation of all European Jews • Holocaust & Final Solutionnot synonymous: the Holocaust is a term that encompasses all forms of discrimination & persecution of Jews within Nazi sphere of influence & includes resistance and rescue. • Final Solution of the Jewish Questionpart of broader plan forvölkische Flurbereinigung[ethnic cleansing]

5. Nazi iDEology Grounded in 19th Century Völkisch Theories of Human History &Relations. • Race=Fixed Set of Physiological, Psychological, Behavioral & Ethical Characteristics • Inequality of the Races • Social Darwinist Struggle for Survival

6. NAZI IDEOLOGY • Social Darwinism • Survival=Expansion and Purification. • Growth through reproduction requires expansion. Instinctual impulse. • Purification: eliminating foreign biological influences & defective genetic elements. • Each race expanded from fixed, national land base.

7. Nazi ideology JEWS AS PRIORITY RACIAL ENEMY • Jews defined as race—but no land mass. • Jews only race with capacity to organize inferior races to resist & destroy superior races & cultures. 1. International finance: impoverish host nation 2. Mass media: mislead host nation 3. Bolshevism: instigate civil war & political chaos. 4. Equal rights and international peace: a. Undermine host nations & drain away natural advantages of superior “races.” • Jews priority danger--acted like Germans.

8. Other Racial “Issues” • Polish Leadership Classes—Intellectual elites • East Slavs & “Asiatics”—Soviet civilians • Bearers of the Bolshevik idea—Soviet POWs & officials of Soviet Communist Party & State

9. Other Racial “Issues” • People with hereditary physical & intellectual disabilities “Breed out” “weak genes” & eliminate “useless eaters.” Sterilization, later “mercy-killing.” • Roma—hereditary “criminal class” • Afro-Germans • About 2,500 in Germany • Nazi regime did not physically annihilate Afro-Germans. Many, though not all were sterilized • Too small a minority to have significant priority

10. “BEHAVIORAL” ENEMIES • NEVER AGAIN 1918: STAB IN THE BACK 1. TOOLS OF JEWS: • Criminals, Asocials- incl. Roma & Homosexuals • Political Opponents: Pacifists, Internationalists, Catholic Clergy, Jehovah’s Witnesses. • “Marxists”: Social Democrats, Communists, Labor Unions, Anarchists. 2. BEFORE GERMANY WENT TO WAR AGAIN, THESE FORCES HAD TO BE NEUTRALIZED. 3. RACIALLY VALUABLE—REHABILITATION.

11. Chancellor Adolf Hitler and President Paul von Hindenburg. Potsdam, Germany, March 21, 1933

12. STATE OF EMERGENCY • February 28, 1933: Reichstag Fire Decree 1. Suspended constitutional constraints on state investigations of individuals & groups for criminal or subversive actions 2. Authorized central government to overthrow local governments 3. Central Government decides when emergency ends

13. STATE OF EMERGENCY • Emergency legislation directed against Communists • Highly popular. • Opened extra-legal space to implement core Nazi goals • Hitler’s position as Führer, August 19, 1934, placed his authority outside constraints of state & law.

14. SA man guards arrested Communists. Berlin, Germany, March 6, 1933.

15. NAZI BOYCOTT Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews! Assault Detachment (Sturmabteilungen—SA) members with signs block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop. Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933.

16. “Working towards the FÜhrer” The Burning of “Un-German“ Books. Berlin, Germany, May 1933.

17. Race Hygiene At Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, & Eugenics, a racial hygienist measures a woman's features to “determine” her racial ancestry. Berlin, Germany, date uncertain.

18. “Folk Community” (Volksgemeinschaft) Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg, Germany, September 1938.

19. Chart indicating determination of Jewish racial ancestry in Nazi Germany.

20. A chart used by German Ministry of Health to justify compulsory sterilization of "inferiors." Shows decrease in reproduction of "superior" peoples & increase in "inferior" peoples. Germany, 1938

21. Antisemitic Propaganda Nazi Antisemitic Book, The Eternal Jew, 1937 Nazi stereotype depicting Jews as both money lenders & communists. Source: Der Ewige Jude, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Franz Eher, Nachf., 1937

22. German Gains 1938-1939

23. “Peace in our time!” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (center) meets press at airport following return from Munich Conference. London, Great Britain, September 1938.

24. Emigration Jews wait at Margarethen Police Precinct for exit visas. Vienna, Austria, March 1938.

25. Emigration Children’s Transport (Kindertransport) Passport issued to Gertrud Gerda Levy, who left Germany in August 1939 on a Children's Transport (Kindertransport) to Great Britain. Berlin, Germany, August 23, 1939.

26. A synagogue destroyed during Kristallnacht ("Night of Crystal"). Baden-Baden, Germany, November 10, 1938.

28. Transferring Ownership “Stamm &Bassermann Formerly Gummi Weil” "Aryanization" of Jewish-owned businesses. Frankfurt, Germany, 1938.

29. Nazi Soviet Pact August 23, 1939, Purpose of Nazi-Soviet Pact for Nazi Germany: Secure Germany’s Eastern Front in event of war with West.

30. Start of World War II German forces during invasion of Poland, Sep. 1939

31. German soldiers guard Jews rounded up for forced labor. Warsaw, Poland, 1939 or 1940.

33. “Legitimizing” medical murder Berlin, September 1, 1939 Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are tasked with responsibility to extend the authority of physicians to be designated in future so that, after the most careful assessment of their condition, those suffering from illnesses deemed to be incurable may be granted a mercy death. [signed] A. Hitler

34. People with Disabilities in Germany

36. German-Occupied Europe

37. German Partition of Poland

38. Ghettos

39. View, footbridge connecting two parts of Łódź ghetto. Łódź, Poland, 1941

40. In the Ghetto Jews in crowded apartment in Radom ghetto. Poland, March 1941-August 1942.

41. In the Ghetto In Warsaw ghetto, Jewish children with bowls for rations of soup. Warsaw, Poland, 1940-1943.

42. In the Ghetto Child working at a machine in a ghetto workshop. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1941-1943.

43. Characteristics of Ghettos • Geographically located in north & central regions of the former Jewish Pale of Settlement, where European Jewish population was more dense: Government General, Białystok District, Lithuania, Latvia, & western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. • A section of a city in which Jews were required to live—almost always a run down section, lacking utilities connections. • Jews not permitted to leave confines of the ghetto without authorization of Germans. • Jewish community “governed” by a self-administration, usually a Jewish Council.

44. 5. Jewish Council responsible to Jewish community for: a) Housing b) Food distribution c) Policing d) Taxation e) Education and Childcare f) Social Services g) Sanitation, Burial

45. THE “Final Solution • January 24, 1939: • Heydrich as Chief of Security Police & SD entrusted w/coordinating Final Solution to Jewish question in Reich • September 27, 1939: • Security Police & SD reorganized into RSHAunder Heydrich, later Kaltenbrunner • July 31, 1941: • Heydrich & RSHA tasked w/coordinating Final Solution to Jewish Question in Europe

46. Shooting Operation Sites

47. Shooting Operations Ukrainian Jews shortly before German SS & police massacre them. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.

48. German police shoot wounded Jewish women following the mass shooting of Jewish civilians outside the Mizocz ghetto. Belarus, October 1942.

49. Wannsee Conference Site of January 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference, convened by Reich Security Main Office chief Reinhard Heydrich, on "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Berlin, Germany, date uncertain.

50. SS & Police Units Charged with Implementing “Final Solution” Reichsfuhrer - SS and Chief of German Police Henrich Himmler Higher SS & Police Leader Government General F. -W. Krüger SS Operations Main Office SS-Economic & Administrative Main Office Oswald Pohl SS Main Office Chief Order Police Kurt Daluege chief, Security Police & SD RSHA (Berlin) Reinhard Heydrich VI SD- Foreign IdS (Reich) BdS (Occupied Territories) Office III SD- Internal Office IV Gestapo Inspector , Concentration Camps (to 1942) Inspectorate, Concentration Camps (after 3/42) Office V Kripo Operations Office Waffen SS IdO (Reich) BdO (Occupied Teritories) IVb4 Eichmann SS & Police Leader Lublin District Globocnik Camp Commandant Auschwitz Rudolf Hoess Police Battalions Eg. 101 Waffen SS Field Units Einsatzgruppen of Sipo & SD KdO KdS Dept. Operation “Reinhard” KdG Trawniki Training Camp Streibel Deportations Höfle SS Special Detachments Wirth Detachment Lublin Detachment P oniatowa Belzec Sobibor Treblinka 2