MEADOWVIEW MIDDLE SCHOOL
SUMMER 2014
THE HOLOCAUST
ADOLF HITLER
THE NAZIS
HOLOCAUST QUESTIONS
What was the Holocaust?
• The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic
persecution and annihilation of European Jews by the
Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and
1945. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in
the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by
Germany during World War II. By 1945 two out of
every three European Jews had been killed. Jews were
the primary victims – six million were murdered; Roma
(Gypsies), the handicapped and Poles were also targeted
for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or
national reasons. Millions more, including Soviet
POWs, political dissidents, homosexuals and Jehovah’s
Witnesses suffered grievous oppression and death under
Nazi tyranny.
Who were the Nazis?
• “Nazi” is a short term for the National Socialist German
Workers Party, a right-wing political party formed in
1919 primarily by unemployed German veterans of
World War I. Adolf Hitler became head of the party in
1921, and under his leadership the party became a
powerful political force in German elections by the
early 1930s. The Nazi party ideology was strongly antiCommunist, racist, nationalistic, imperialistic, and
militaristic.
• In 1933, the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany and
Hitler was appointed Chancellor. He ended German
democracy and severely restricted basic rights, such as
freedom of speech, press and assembly. He established
a brutal dictatorship through a reign of terror. This
created an atmosphere of fear which helped the Nazis to
obtain the acquiescence of social institutions .
Why did the Nazis want to kill large numbers of innocent
people?
• The Nazis believed that Germans were ‘racially
superior’ and that there was a struggle for survival
between them and ‘inferior races.’ Jews, Roma, and the
handicapped were seen as a serious biological threat to
the purity of the “German (Aryan) Race” and therefore
had to be ‘exterminated.’ The Nazis blamed the Jews
for Germany’s defeat in World War I, for its economic
problems and for the spread of Communist parties
throughout Europe. Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians and
others) were also considered ‘inferior’ and destined to
serve as slave labor for their German masters.
Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
homosexuals and Free Masons were persecuted,
imprisoned and often killed on political and behavioral
(rather than racial) ground. Sometimes the distinction
was not very clear. Millions of Soviet POWs perished
from starvation, disease and forced labor or were killed
for political reasons.
How did the Nazis carry out their policy of genocide?
• In the late 1930’s the Nazis killed thousands of
handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous
gas. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in
June 1941, mobile killing units following in the wake of
the German Army began shooting massive numbers of
Jews and Roma in open fields and ravines on the
outskirts of conquered cities and towns. Eventually the
Nazis created a more secluded and organized method of
killing enormous numbers of civilians –six
extermination centers were established in occupied
Poland where large-scale murder by gas and body
disposal through cremation were conducted
systematically. Victims were deported to these centers
from Western Europe and from the ghettos in Eastern
Europe which the Nazis had established. In addition,
millions died in the ghettos and concentration camps as
a result of force labor, starvation, exposure, brutality,
disease, and execution.
How did the world respond to the Holocaust?
• The US and Great Britain as well as other nations
outside Nazi Europe received numerous press reports in
the 1930s about the persecution of Jews. By 1942 the
governments of the US and Great Britain had confirmed
reports about “The Final Solution” – Germany’s intent
to kill all the Jews of Europe. However, influenced by
anti-Semitism and fear of a massive influx of refugees,
neither country modified their refugee policies. Their
stated intention to defeat Germany militarily took
precedence over rescue efforts, and therefore no
specific attempts to stop or slow the genocide were
made until mounting pressure eventually forced the US
to undertake limited rescue efforts in 1944.
• In Europe, rampant anti-Semitism incited citizens of
many German occupied countries to collaborated with
the Nazis in their genocidal policies. There were,
however, individuals and groups in every occupied
nation who, at great personal risk, helped hide those
targeted by the Nazis. One nation, Denmark, saved most
of its Jews in a nighttime rescue operation in 1943 in
which Jews were ferried in fishing boats to safety in
neutral Sweden.
NAZI GHETTOS
NAZI GHETTOS
• The term “ghetto” originated from the
name of the Jewish quarter in Venice,
est. in 1516, in which the Venetian
authorities compelled the city’s Jew’s to
live.
GHETTOS DURING WWII
• During World War II, ghettos were city
districts (often enclosed) which the
Germans concentrated the municipal
and sometimes regional Jewish
population and forced them to live
under miserable conditions. Ghettos
isolated Jews by separating Jewish
communities from the non-Jewish
population and from other Jewish
communities.
•The Nazis established at least 1,000
ghettos in German-occupied and annexed
Poland and the Soviet Union alone.
German occupation authorities established
the first ghetto in Poland in Piotrkow
Trybunalski in October 1939.
• The Germans regarded the
establishment of ghettos as a provisional
measure to control and segregate Jews.
In many places ghettoization lasted a
relatively short time. Some ghettos
existed for only a few days, others for
months or years.
TYPES OF GHETTOS
• Closed Ghettos- (situated primarily in
German-occupied Poland and the occupied
Soviet Union) were closed off by walls, or by
fences with barbed wire. The German
authorities compelled Jews living in the
surrounding areas to move into the closed
ghetto, thus exacerbating the extremely
crowded and unsanitary conditions. Starvation,
chronic shortages, severe winter weather,
inadequate and unheated housing, and the
absence of adequate municipal services led to
repeated outbreaks of epidemics and to a high
mortality rate. Most ghettos were of this type .
• Open Ghettos- no walls or fences, but
there were restrictions on entering and
leaving. These existed in Germanoccupied Poland and the occupied Soviet
Union.
• Destruction Ghettos- were tightly
sealed off and existed for between two
and six weeks before the Germans
and/or their collaborators deported or
shot the Jewish population concentrated
in them. These existed in Germanoccupied Soviet Union (especially in
Lithuania and the Ukraine), as well as
Hungary.
• The largest ghetto was the Warsaw,
Poland ghetto, where more than 400,000
Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3
sq. miles. Other major ghettos were
established in the cities of Lodz,
Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna,
Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens
of thousands of western European Jews
were also deported to ghettos in the
east.
NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS
With the implementation of the “Final
Solution” (the Nazi plan to murder ALL
European Jews) beginning in late 1941,
the Germans systematically destroyed the
ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries
either shot ghetto residents in mass graves
located nearby or deported them, usually
by train, to concentration camps and
killing centers.
•
The term concentration camp refers
to a camp in which people are
detained or confined, usually under
harsh conditions and without regard
to legal norms of arrest and
imprisonment that are acceptable in
a constitutional democracy.
•
The first concentration camps in
Germany were established soon after
Hitler's appointment as chancellor in
January 1933.
•
German authorities established
camps all over Germany to handle
the enormous amount of people
being deported to the camps .
•
• From
as early as early as 1934,
concentration camp commanders
deployed prisoners as forced laborers
for the benefit of construction
projects, including the construction
or expansion of the camps
themselves.
• As
the war progressed, so did the
expansion of camps.
BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP
• During the early 1940s, many prisoners
were forced to undergo Nazi experiments.
Prisoners were coerced into participating.
Typically, the experiments resulted in
death, disfigurement or permanent
disability, and as such are considered as
examples of medical torture.
• Many of the experiments were
conducted for military purposes.
LIST OF EXPERIMENTS
• Experiments
on twins
• Bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation
experiments
• Head Injury Experiments
• Freezing Experiments
• Mustard gas experiments
• Sea water experiments
• Sterilization experiments
• Poison
• High altitude experiments
DACHAU CAMP EXPERIMENT
Dachau
Concentration Camp
Nazi high altitude
experiments simulated a
pilot ejection at high
altitudes by placing a
prisoner in a low-pressure
chamber and simulating
altitudes of up to 66,000
ft.
WHAT DID THE CAMPS ACCOMPLISH?
HOLOCAUST RESISTANCE
• Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass
murder fueled resistance to the Germans
in the Third Reich itself and throughout
occupied Europe. Although Jews were
the Nazis' primary victims, they too
resisted Nazi oppression in a variety of
ways, both collectively and as
individuals.
• Organized armed resistance was the
most forceful form of Jewish opposition
to Nazi policies in German-occupied
Europe.
• Jewish civilians offered armed
resistance in over 100 ghettos in
occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.
WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING
• Between July 22 and September
12, 1942, the Nazis’ deported or
murdered over 300,000 Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto.
• In response to the deportations, in July
1942, several Jewish underground
organizations created armed selfdefense units known as the Jewish
Combat Organization(Zydowska
Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB).
• The German forces intended to
begin the operation to liquidate the
Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943,
the eve of Passover.
• However, when the Nazis’ entered
the ghetto, the streets were
deserted. Nearly all of the residents
of the ghetto had gone into hiding
places or bunkers.
• The Jewish resistance stun the Nazis’ on
the first day of battle, causing the Nazis’
to retreat.
• On the third day, the Nazis’ began
burning buildings in an attempt to
smoke out the rest of the resistance.
• The Jewish uprising lasted less than a
month.
• Seven Thousand Jews are killed during
the uprising.
ITZHAK KATZENELSON
• “Though it be to die, we will fight…
We will fight not for ourselves but for future
generations
Although we may not survive to see it,
our murderers will pay for their crimes
after we are gone. And our deeds will live
forever.”
Itzhak Katzenelson
LIBERATION
• As Allied troops moved across Europe
in a series of offensives against Nazi
Germany, they began to encounter tens
of thousands of concentration camp
prisoners. Many of these prisoners had
survived forced marches into the
interior of Germany from camps in
occupied Poland. These prisoners were
suffering from starvation and disease.
• The Soviet Union was the first allied
power to approach a Nazi concentration
camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in
July 1944.
• The Soviet Union also found the Belzec,
Sobibor, and Treblinka death camps.
(These camps had already been
destroyed in 1943 after the Nazis’ killed
all the Jews at the camps.)
• The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the
largest killing center and concentration
camp, in January 1945.
• The Soviets found only a few thousand
prisoners alive at Auschwitz.
• They discovered hundreds of thousands
of men's suits, more than 800,000
women's outfits, and more than 14,000
pounds of human hair.
• US forces liberated the Buchenwald
concentration camp near Weimar,
Germany, on April 11, 1945, a few days
after the Nazis began evacuating the
camp.
• 20,000 prisoners were found in
Buchenwald, along with mass graves.
• They also liberated Dora-Mittelbau,
Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen.
AUSCHWITZ BOMBING DEBATE
• From April 1942 to February 1943, The British
Intelligence had been intercepting and
decoding radio messages sent by the “German
Order Police”, which included daily prisoner
returns and death, for ten concentration camps,
including Auschwitz.
• The United States Office of Strategic Services
(the predecessor of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) received reports about
Auschwitz during 1942.
• The Allies received reports of the
death camps from Polish residents
near the death camps, along with
Jewish escapees from the camps.
• These reports were dismissed or
not taken seriously enough by the
Allies.
Allied
Reconnaissance and
Bombing Missions
• The Allies flew
over Auschwitz
several times on
bombing raids near
the death camp.
WHY AUSCHWITZ WAS NOT BOMBED
• The bombing of Auschwitz was
examined in two categories: precision
bombing by Mosquito-type aircraft, and
area bombing by larger aircraft.
• The railway lines were not bombed
because it was how the prisoners food
supplies were delivered. Area bombing
risked killing too many prisoners.
What would YOU
do?
• As one of the
Allied leaders,
would you risk
damaging railway
lines or risk killing
prisoners to stop
the extermination
of the Jews?