THE HOLOCAUST &
NIGHT BY ELIE WIESEL
Background and introductory information
PRE-READING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What do you know about the Holocaust (for certain)?
• What have you heard about the Holocaust (that you may
question)?
• What questions do you have about the Holocaust?
• Why do we take time to study the Holocaust at school?
DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM
• The word “antisemitism” was coined in 1879 in Germany, in an attempt to
define anti-Jewish sentiment on a scientific basis. Unlike the traditional,
religiously, and emotionally based hatred of Jews, antisemitism was to justify
the rejection of Jews as a different people, nation, and later race, that
threatens the mere existence of the national unity and the national state.
Gradually antisemitism became a political ideology embraced by political
parties and organizations that were determined to protest against the socalled “Jewish influence” in political, social, economic, and cultural life.
• Today the term “antisemitism” refers to prejudice or discrimination against
Jews, based on their religious beliefs and/or on group stereotypes.
DEFINITION OF PROPAGANDA
•
“Scholars, journalists, and politicians have long argued about how to properly define
propaganda and distinguish it from other forms of mass communication . Propaganda is
biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior.”
•
All the major governments (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States, Germany,
and Austria-Hungary) employed writers, artists, and filmmakers to craft political messages
aimed at mobilizing their populations for war, at weakening the enemy’s morale and will to
fight, and at winning over audiences in neutral countries. British, American, and French
publicists created potent images of the Germans as barbaric, brutal "Huns" who sought
world domination and the destruction of western civilization. This portrayal reinforced reports
of German atrocities, some real, others exaggerated or fabricated, which aimed to
convince their populations of the righteousness of their cause and the need to continue the
war until the enemy was defeated.
•
Nazi propagandists drew upon the successful techniques and strategies used by the Allies,
Socialists, Communists, and Italian Fascists to advance their political campaigns, win public
support, and to wage war. Once in power, the Nazis eliminated the "marketplace of
ideas" through terror and media manipulation and mobilized propaganda as a weapon to
unite the German people around a "leader" and to facilitate aggression, mass murder,
and genocide.
NAZI PROPAGANDA
NAZI PROPAGANDA
•
The caption in this picture reads:
“Whenever you see a crucifix, think of
the horrible murder of Jesus by the
Jews.” The Nazis used this common
belief among Christians to further
alienate Jews. Nazi ideology, however,
was against all religions and viewed
Christianity as a transferred form of
Judaism. Some Aryan symbols appear
in this picture such as the bright hair,
the connection to nature, children, and
the continuity of the race.
NAZI PROPAGANDA
•
The Jew in this caricature
is portrayed as ugly,
greedy, and controlling the
media and stock exchange
(the newspaper in his
pocket with the title
“Burse”). His eyes are
made to look suspicious.
Overall he is to be seen as
unproductive, exploitive,
unstable, and evil. By
contrast, the German or
Aryan is portrayed as
hard-working, strong,
stable, and honest. He is
tall, in good physical
shape, and has a direct
look in his eyes.
NAZI
PROPAGANDA
HITLER’S GERMANY – THE THIRD REICH
• Nazi foreign policy was guided by the
racist belief that Germany was
biologically destined to expand
eastward by military force and that an
enlarged, racially superior German
population should establish
permanent rule in eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union.
• Here, women played a vital role. The
Third Reich's aggressive population
policy encouraged "racially pure"
women to bear as many "Aryan"
children as possible.
• Within this framework, "racially
inferior" peoples, such as Jews
and Gypsies, would be
eliminated from the region.
• In the context of this ideological
war, the Nazis planned and
implemented the Holocaust,
the mass murder of the Jews,
who were considered the primary
"racial" enemy.
•
(Text direct from United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum Website)
HITLER’S GERMANY – THE THIRD REICH
• During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also
targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial
inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of
the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other
groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and
behavioral grounds, among them Communists,
Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
•
(Text direct from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website)
THE HOLOCAUST (BY DEFINITION)
Imperial War Museum, London, UK
•
Under the cover of the Second World War,
for the sake of their “new order,” the Nazis
sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe.
For the first time in history, industrial
methods were used for the mass
extermination of a whole people. Six million
were murdered, including 1,500,000
children. This event is called the Holocaust.
•
The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions
of others as well. Gypsies, people with
physical and mental disabilities, Poles,
Soviet prisoners of war, trade unionists,
political opponents, prisoners of conscience,
homosexuals, and others were killed in vast
numbers.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Washington, DC, USA
•
The Holocaust refers to a specific genocidal
event in twentieth-century history: the statesponsored, systematic persecution and
annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi
Germany and its collaborators between
1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary
victims — 6 million were murdered;
Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were
also targeted for destruction or decimation
for racial, ethnic, or national reasons.
Millions more, including homosexuals,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of
war, and political dissidents, also suffered
grievous oppression and death under Nazi
tyranny.
THE “FINAL SOLUTION”
•
In the early years of the Nazi
regime, the National Socialist
government established
concentration camps to detain real
and imagined political and
ideological opponents.
•
Increasingly in the years before the
outbreak of war, SS and police
officials incarcerated Jews, Roma,
and other victims of ethnic and racial
hatred in these camps.
•
(Text direct from United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum
Website)
•
To concentrate and monitor the
Jewish population as well as to
facilitate later deportation of the
Jews, the Germans and their
collaborators created ghettos,
transit camps, and forced-labor
camps for Jews during the war
years.
•
The German authorities also
established numerous forced-labor
camps, both in the so-called Greater
German Reich and in Germanoccupied territory, for non-Jews
whose labor the Germans sought to
exploit.
THE “FINAL SOLUTION”
•
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units)
and, later, militarized battalions of
Order Police officials, moved behind
German lines to carry out massmurder operations against Jews,
Roma, and Soviet state and
Communist Party officials.
•
German SS and police units,
supported by units of the Wehrmacht
and the Waffen SS, murdered more
than a million Jewish men, women,
and children, and hundreds of
thousands of others.
•
Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi
German authorities deported
millions of Jews from Germany,
from occupied territories, and from
the countries of many of its Axis
allies to ghettos and to killing
centers, often called extermination
camps, where they were murdered
in specially developed gassing
facilities.
•
(Text direct from United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum Website)
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
•
Concentration camps refer to places in which people are confined (by force), “usually
under harsh conditions” and with disregard to a country’s laws and/or regulations.
•
Sturmabteilungen (aka Storm Troopers) were the elite polite force of Germany’s Third
Reich and ran many of the concentration camps.
•
In 1934. Hitler put Heinrich Himmler in charge of the system of concentration camps in
and around Germany. SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke helped him with this task.
•
From 1939-1942, as Germany took over parts of Europe with its miliary, concentration
camps expanded. Many were sites for extermination of certain groups of people. These
groups would either be killed outright (often in gas chambers) or worked to death in a
program called Annhiliation Through Work.
•
Toward the end of the war, concentration camp populations dwindled (because of
starvation, exposure to the elements, and disease). The SS also moved prisoners (often
in long, long marches), so they could not be liberated.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
• From 1942-1945, the Nazis also
used prisoners to carry out horrific
medical experiments. These
experiments killed many prisoners.
• The Nazis were testing immunity
to infectious disease, testing
survival in harsh conditions (varied
air pressure, frozen water, etc.),
and testing twins (to see how they
could produce more Aryan people
more quickly).
• From 1944-1945, the Allied Forces
(including America) liberated, or
freed the prisoners of the
concentrations camps as the war
ended.
• The number of prisoners left in
camps was approximately 700,000.
However, deaths continued for
weeks after camps were liberated.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Dachau Camp
Newly arrived prisoners at Buchenwald
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Forced labor at Neuengamme
Himmler, inspecting a camp
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Uniformed prisoners at Sachenhausen
View of Neuengamme camp
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Dauchau medical experiments
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Hair of women prisoners
Murdered women's clothing
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
American soldier among corpses
Corpses found at Gusen
CONCENTRATION CAMPS – IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Prisoners of Wobbelin at liberation
American soldiers at liberation
THE HOLOCAUST (BY DEFINITION)
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
• The Holocaust was the murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazis
and their collaborators. Between the German invasion of the Soviet Union in
the summer of 1941 and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Nazi
Germany and its accomplices strove to murder every Jew under their
domination. Because Nazi discrimination against the Jews began with Hitler’s
accession to power in January 1933, many historians consider this the start of
the Holocaust era. The Jews were not the only victims of Hitler’s regime, but
they were the only group that the Nazis sought to destroy entirely.
THE HOLOCAUST (BY DEFINITION)
SOURCES
•
•
•
•
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Online Resources:
http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/resources/
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005141
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143
• Echoes and Reflections Unit – Online resources:
http://www.echoesandreflections.org/curriculum_components/resource_center.asp