9.3 The Holocaust
Identify the roots of Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Describe how the Nazis carried out a program of
genocide.
Describe the various acts of Jewish resistance.
Summarize the response of the Allies to the
Holocaust.
First Objective
• Identify the roots of Nazi
persecution of the Jews.
The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews
• Nuremburg Laws of 1935 put Nazi racist ideology
into practice.
– Removed citizenship from German Jews.
– Banned marriage between Jews and Non-Jews.
– Removed from Jobs and homes.
Continued…
• Schools and the Hitler Youth Movement taught
children that Jews were “polluting” German society
and culture.
• November 1938, Kristallnacht = Night of Broken
Glass
Nazi Concentration Camp
• Political opponents were sent first to concentration
camps. Jews soon followed.
• 1934, Hitler gave Heinrich Himmler the power to
take full control of concentration camps.
• After WW2 began, the Nazis built more camps for
– Jews from Poland and Eastern Europe
– Resistance fighters
– Roma (Gypsies)
– Slavs
– Other racially undesirable elements
Continued…
• During war, Nazis used people in camps as forced
laborers.
• They produced weapons and other war goods.
• Faced brutal mistreatment, hunger, disease, and
execution.
• Hundreds of thousands were murdered.
Brutal Medical Experiments
• In some camps, Nazi doctors conducted painful and
deadly medical experiments on prisoners.
• Tested dangerous new drugs and treatments and
also ran experiments.
• Josef Mengele, a physician at the notorious
Auschwitz concentration camp conducted
experiments to see how different ethnic groups
responded to contagious diseases like yellow fever
or malaria.
Hitler’s Final Solution
• As Nazis advanced into Eastern Europe they forced
Jews in Poland and elsewhere to live in ghettos, or
restricted areas where they were sealed off from
the surrounding city.
Continued…
• Hitler’s “Final Solution” or campaign of genocide to
exterminate all European Jews became known as
the Holocaust.
• Mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) followed the
German army and murdered over a million Jewish
men, women and children in Eastern Europe.
Continued…
• Hitler had 6 death camps built in Poland.
– As prisoners reached camps, they were stripped of
clothes and valuables.
– Heads were shaved.
– Guards separated women from men, and children from
parents.
– Young, elderly and sick were murdered immediately.
• Were told they were going to be disinfected
• Gassed in shower-like rooms.
• Bodies burned in crematoriums.
Continued…
• Nazis worked younger, healthier prisoners to death
or used them for inhumane experiments.
• By June 1945, Nazis killed more than 6,000,000
Jews.
• 6,000,000 “undesirable” people were killed as well.
Objective Review
• What are the roots of Nazi persecution of the
Jews? Where did it all start?
• Describe how the Nazis carried out a program
of genocide.
New Objective
• Describe the various acts of Jewish Resistance.
Jewish Resistance
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
– July 1942, Nazis began sending Polish Jews from the
Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp.
– By Spring 1943, German plan to clear the Warsaw ghetto
was evident, resistance groups planned a revolt.
– Jews took over ghetto and prepared to fight to the end.
Continued…
• Within a month the resistance forces were
crushed.
• The Ghetto was in ruins and thousands were
killed in the fighting.
• Survivors were sent to death camps.
• Inspired uprisings elsewhere.
Continuing Resistance
• Few Jews escaped the ghettos.
• About 25,000 Jews many of them teenagers, joined
resistance groups waging guerrilla warfare against
the Nazis (partisans).
• Uprisings occurred at Treblinka and Sobibor.
– October 1944, a group of Auschwitz Jews destroyed one
of the gas chambers.
– Some Jews resisted by hiding and preserved their Jewish
culture as best they could.
Hiding Jews
• Friends, neighbors and even strangers protected
Jews.
• Italians hid Jews in their villages.
• Denmark and Bulgaria saved almost all their Jewish
population.
– Danish resistance coordinated the flight of over 7,000
Jews to safety in nearby Sweden.
Anne Frank
• Famous for her tale of silent resistance during
Holocaust.
• Anne and her family hid for two years in her
dad’s office building in Amsterdam.
• 8 people worked together to secretly feed and
care for the family.
Continued..
• Most people closed their eyes to what was
happening.
• Many cooperated with the Nazis, actively
taking part in killing or informing on Jews in
hiding.
• Strict immigration policies prevented many
Jews from gaining refuge elsewhere.
The Allies Respond to the Holocaust
• U.S. press barely covered the story of the Holocaust.
• Congress didn’t increase the amount of Jewish
immigrants it would accept into the country.
• They didn’t even meet the set quota, meaning they
didn’t accept as many as they said they would.
The Question of Jewish Refugees
• Summer 1938, delegates from 32 countries met in
France and expressed sympathy for the refugees
but offered excuses as to why they wouldn’t accept
more.
• Americans worried that refugees would take jobs
away from them and overburden social welfare
programs.
Continued…
• Racial prejudices = Allies = Kept Jews out.
• 1939, U.S. turned away a ship with Jewish
passengers which was forced to return to Germany.
• Britain briefly lifted restrictions and accepted
10,000 Jewish children (parents were not allowed
to come).
Allies Take Limited Action
• Allies were slow to respond to Jewish genocide.
– 1942, death camps were kept classified by Allies.
• President Roosevelt began to respond to reports of
Jewish genocide in 1944.
– Established War Refugee Board (saved Jewish ppl.)
– Issued thousands of Swedish Passports to Jews, saved
them from being deported.
– 200,000 Jews were saved
Liberation of the Concentration Camps
• Allies were not prepared to see
– piles of dead bodies
– warehouses full of human hair and jewelry
– ashes from crematoriums
– or half-dead survivors.
• Soviet forces were first to liberate a Nazi camp.
– Nazis attempted to destroy evidence of mass murder by
destroying camp.
– More than 10,000 prisoners died weeks after being
liberated due to malnutrition.
Impact of the Holocaust
• Nothing in history compares to the Holocaust.
• Nazis deliberately set out to destroy the Jews for
their heritage.
• Record of that slaughter is a vivid reminder of the
monstrous results of racism and intolerance.
Survivors
• Nowhere to go after being freed.
– Homes, villages, and communities had been destroyed.
– Many ended up in refugee camps, waiting to find homes.
– Many countries still refused to accept them.
• As horrors of Holocaust were revealed, worldwide
support for an independent Jewish homeland
increased.
– Many displaced survivors immigrated to Israel.