THE HOLOCAUST
STAGE 1: Stripping of Rights
1935 – Nuremberg Laws
All Jews:
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Stripped of German citizenship
Fired from jobs and businesses boycotted
Banned from German schools and universities
Marriages between Jews and Aryans
forbidden
• Forced to carry ID cards
• Forced to wear an arm band with the
yellow “Star of David”
• Jewish synagogues destroyed
STAGE 1: Stripping of Rights
1938 – Kristallnacht
• “The Night of the Broken Glass”
• SS officers set all synagogues in Germany on fire, destroy businesses
owned by Jews, and arrest thousands
STAGE 2: Segregation
• Jews forced to live in designated
areas called “ghettos” to isolate
them from the rest of society
• Ghettos were filthy and extremely
overcrowded, with poor
sanitation
• Disease and lack of food led to
starvation
• The largest ghetto, in Warsaw,
had 500,000 people
STAGE 3: Concentration Camps
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“The Final Solution” – originated at the Wansee Conference
A system of camps used to murder enemies of Nazi Germany
Built on railroad lines for quick transportation
Prisoners transported in cattle cars
Slave labor  “death by work”
Prisoners were malnourished and died of starvation
STAGE 4: Extermination
• 1. Einsatzgruppen – Mobile death squads that murdered the
Jews in villages conquered by the Nazis
• 2. Death Camps – New concentration camps created for the
sole purpose of mass murder
NAZI METHODS
• Poisonous Gas
– Introduced in 1942
– Zyklon B
– Could kill dozens in
minutes
NAZI METHODS
• Mass Executions
– Completed by the
Einsatzgruppen
– Bodies left in mass graves
NAZI METHODS
• Crematoriums
– Replaced mass graves as
Nazi burial method
– Crematorium 4 at
Auschwitz-Birkenau
could burn 1500 bodies
each day.
PERCENTAGE OF JEWS MURDERED IN
EACH COUNTRY
Netherlands
Hungary
Yugoslavia
Romania
Latvia
Lithuania
Greece
Poland
71%
74%
81%
84%
84%
85%
87%
91%
HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE KILLED?
• 6 million Jews
• 5 million
– Political opponents, Communists, Homosexuals,
Intellectuals, Roma (gypsies)
• It is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen murdered 2
million people, mostly European Jews