The Nazi Holocaust

1. The Nazi Holocaust Extermination of the Jews

2. Standard WHII.12b: The student will demonstrate knowledge of the worldwide impact of World War II by examining the Holocaust and other examples of genocide in the twentieth century. Essential Understandings: • There had been a climate of hatred against Jews in Europe and Russia for centuries • Various instances of genocide occurred throughout the twentieth century Essential Questions: Why did the Holocaust occur? What are other examples of genocide in the twentieth century? Elements Leading to the Holocaust: • Totalitarianism combined with nationalism • History of anti-Semitism • Defeat in WWI and economic depression blamed on German Jews • Hitler’s belief in the master race (Aryans) • Final Solution: extermination camps, gas chambers

3. Terms to Know ______________________________: The organized & purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group ________________________________: Prejudice against or hostility toward Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. In its extreme form, it defames Jews as an inferior group and denies their being part of the nation[s] in which they reside. _____________________________________: Systematic, government-sponsored, persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and it’s collaborators. Means “sacrifice by fire.”

4. Hitler’s Focus on Racial Superiority • Mein Kampf (1925) = “_____________” • Considered the Bible of ________________ • Presents Hitler’s major ideas • Anti-Semitism • Anti-Communism • Superiority of the Aryan race • German nationalism • The state’s superiority over the individual • Hitler described a _____________________ _______________________________ with: • Aryans (the culture-producing race) at the top • Jews, Africans, Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, etc. (the culture-destroying races) at the bottom • The importance of the book is that it calls for German ____________________________ of Europe

5. Hitler’s Goal: Remove Inferior Types • Hitler's goal was to remove the __________________ types from Germany, making more ___________________ (living space) for the superior Aryans • Jews were the special object of his hatred

6. The War Against the Jews When the Nazis began to wage war against the Jews, they used speeches and ____________________________ The headlines say "Jews are our misfortune" and "How the Jew cheats." Germany, 1936. From an anti-Semitic children's book. The sign reads "Jews are not wanted here."

7. _________________________________ OF DISCRIMINATION TOWARDS JEWS • Hitler was ______________________ to be the Chancellor of Germany and then with the NAZI party, he seized total power in 1933 and ___________________ began a program against the Jews of Germany • In 1933 there were 566,000 Jews living in Germany • Each new year in Germany led to harsher policies directed towards the Jews

8. 1933 • NAZIS force people to ____________ Jewish businesses • ________________ limited the # of Jews who could attend ___________ schools • Hermann Goering created the _________________________ = the ____________________________ of Nazi Germany (the ______ (Schutzstaffel) = Hitler’s personal bodyguards) was formed the following year • Law allowing for forced ___________________________ of those found to have genetic defects (i.e., blindness, epilepsy) • First _________________________ __________________________ built • Dachau near Munich • Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany • Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany • Ravensbruck for women

9. The "Sterilization Law" explained the importance of weeding out so-called genetic defects from the total German gene pool: Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.

10. 1935: ________________ Race Laws ___________________ followed the limitations on the civil rights of Jewish citizens Jewish children, who remained in public schools, were constantly humiliated in the classroom

11. Why did the Jews stay? Many Jews __________ to other European nations or to the United States. ____________, however, stayed behind, convinced that as fully integrated German citizens they were safe. In doing so, they failed to understand the ___________________ of their predicament.

12. 1938 1936 • Nazi troops enter Austria (_________________ = ____________________) • League of Nations considers helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but no country will take them • SS Deathshead division is created to guard camps • Heinreich ___________ is appointed Chief of the German Police Why was Austria so important to Hitler?

13. 1939 • Reinhard ______________________ is ordered to speed up ________________________ of Jews • Jews must hand over all gold & silver • Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia & _______________________________ SPARK of WWII • All Jews must wear _______________ ________ as a method of identification • Nazis begin _____________________ on sick and disabled in Germany “I ask nothing of Jews except that they should disappear” The St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the U.S. & other countries & returns to Europe

14. Operation T4: Euthanasia The Nazis advocated the _________________ (killing) of those who would not improve the German race and had no use in society – those who Hitler called the “__________________________________" Ex. mentally ill, terminally ill, physically handicapped, mentally handicapped They euphemistically called this “_________________________,“ which is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering

15. 1939 KRISTALLNACHT = “________________________________” (Nov. 9, 1939) • -Mob violence broke out as the German _____________ stood by & ______________ • -Storm troopers & members of the SS beat & ______________________________________________ along with the mobs • -Nearly 1000 synagogues were __________________, Jewish homes & businesses were destroyed & thousands of Jews were rounded up during Herschel Grynszpan: 17year-old Jew living in Paris, shot & killed a member of the German Embassy in retaliation for the poor treatment his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis: his family, along w/ thousands of other Jews, had been transported in boxcars & dumped at the Polish border In response, the German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, incited Germans to "rise in bloody ________________________ against the Jews

16. The burning of synagogues during Kristallnacht

17. 1940 • First ________________________ established in Poland • Ghetto – walled off parts of the city in which the people could be more easily controlled • German Jews were ____________________________ to Poland to live in ghettos • Ghettos will be liquidated starting in 1942; however, some Jews remained in ghettos until the end of WWII (1945) Waiting for a drink of water in the Warsaw Ghetto, where water and food were in short supply. Ghettos did not originate during this time period. The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live. Various officials, ranging from local municipal authorities to the Austrian Emperor Charles V, ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome, Prague, and other cities in the 16th and 17th centuries

18. Children climbing the walls to smuggle food into the Warsaw Ghetto

19. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: April - May 1943 One of the most famous photos taken during the Holocaust shows Jewish families arrested by Nazis during the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, and sent to be gassed at Treblinka extermination camp.

20. 1942: The “Final Solution” Wansee Conference - January 20, 1942: the “________________________________” decision was made Jews would be systematically evacuated from all over occupied Europe to camps in the east, where the entire Jewish population would be exterminated • Three Phases: • Phase 1: _________________________________ – Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated – they were taken to the woods and were shot one by one – their bodies were buried in mass graves • Phase 2: _________________________________ – Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans – The vans were equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van • Phase 3: _________________________________ – Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final Solution by sending Jews to camps – the most effective method for mass extermination became gassing in specially constructed ______________________ (disguised as showers), from which the bodies were removed to adjacent crematoriums • This plan of _________________________ was carried out with efficiency and the victims, whose will to resist had been sapped by prolonged starvation and disease, were often unaware until the last moment that they were going to be gassed

22. Einsatzgrubben executions in the Ukraine

23. Concentration Camps • ___________________: The process of separating people who arrived at the camps • The strong & healthy were sent to work in the ________________________________________ • The young, the old & the ill were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers of the ________________________________________ Inmates at Sachenhausen wearing identifying badges

24. AUSCHWITZ • ___________________________________________ located in Poland • Started operations in January 1940 • Himmler chose Auschwitz as the place for the Final Solution • Had 4 gas chambers/crematories by 1943 • Mass killings with Zyklon B gas • Recorded as many as 12,000 kills in one day

25. THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ WERE ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS TEETH WITH GOLD PILES OF GLASSES

26. ZYKLON-B GAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE COMPARED TO GAS. DROPPED FROM CEILINGS IN GAS CHAMBERS.

28. Prisoners at Dachau

29. Children victims of Nazi medical experiments

30. The final destination for those who could not work, the gas chamber. This is the gas chamber at Flossenburg.

31. Ovens in crematorium

32. Jewish Resistance • Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass murder fueled Jewish resistance to the Germans • Resistance took many forms: • __________________ resistance (e.g., Warsaw ghetto uprising) • __________________ resistance (e.g., production and spread of underground newspapers; acts of sabotaging the German war effort – stealing documents, tampering with vital machinery, producing faulty munitions, setting fires in factories, etc.) • ________________________ from the ghettos into the ________________________ (Bielski brothers) • __________________ & rescue (e.g., parachutists were dropped in German-occupied regions to give whatever help they could to Jews in hiding) • __________________________ resistance (e.g., attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people)

33. Rescuers • Foreign governments had policies to stay neutral or to restrict immigration • Some diplomats and foreign officials ____________________ their governments by issuing visas and other protective documentation that allowed refugees to _____________ German-occupied territories • Some rescuers established safe houses or hid Jews in their embassies or private residences • Consequences for rescuers who were caught: • By their own government = transferred, fired, or stripped of their ranks and pensions • By the Nazis = imprisoned, deported to a concentration camp, and sometimes murdered

34. Oskar Schindler: An Unlikely Hero When asked why he had intervened on behalf of the Jews, Schindler replied (1964 interview): “The persecution of Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In 1939 and 1940, they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in ghettos. In 1941 and 1942, this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice.”

35. Liberation • In the last days of WWII, even when the Nazis knew they weren’t going to win the war, they were still ________________________ to give up the plan to exterminate the Jews • They either ________________________ Jews in the camps as they abandoned them, _________________________ them into the interior of Germany, or cut off food and water in the camps leaving them to ______________ • In 1945, the camps were liberated by Allied forces

36. Children at Auschwitz. The lucky ones were liberated in 1945.

37. Mass grave site at Bergen-Belsen. The British found many dead when they liberated the camp.