The Nazi
Holocaust
Extermination of the Jews
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?
Terms to Know
Genocide:
The systematic & purposeful destruction of a racial, political, religious,
or cultural group
Anti-Semitism:
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.
Holocaust:
Systematic, government-sponsored, persecution and murder of
approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and it’s
collaborators. Means “sacrifice by fire.”
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

Racial Superiority

Mein Kampf (1925)
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“My Struggle”
Considered the Bible of Nazism
Presents Hitler’s major ideas on antiSemitism, anti-Communism, superiority of
the Aryan race, German nationalism, the
state’s superiority over the individual, and
Hitler’s feelings of hostility for democracy
Hitler described a racial hierarchy with:
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Aryans (the culture-producing race) at the top
Jews, Africans, Gypsies, the mentally and
physically disabled, etc. (the culturedestroying races) at the bottom
The importance of the book is that it calls for
German domination of Europe
Goal: Remove Inferior Types

Hitler's goal was to
remove the inferior
types from Germany,
making more
lebensraum (living
space) for the
superior Aryans

Jews were the special
object of his hatred
The War Against the Jews

When the Nazis began to
wage war against the Jews,
they used rhetoric and
propaganda
From an anti-Semitic children's book. The
sign reads "Jews are not wanted here."
The headlines say "Jews are our misfortune"
and "How the Jew cheats." Germany, 1936.
PROGRESSION OF DISCRIMINATION
TOWARDS JEWS

The NAZI party and Adolf Hitler seized
power in Germany in 1933 and slowly
began their 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

NAZIS boycott Jewish businesses

Issue decree that defines nonAryans
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Hermann Goering creates the
GESTAPO (the secret police of Nazi
Germany)

Nazis pass law allowing for forced
sterilization of those found by a
Hereditary Health Court to have
genetic defects

First concentration camps are built
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Dachau near Munich
Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany
Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern
Germany
Ravensbruck for women
1933
Eugenics & Sterilization

It also meant eugenics – the science of
improving the race through selective
breeding

The Nazis required the sterilization of
those who carried hereditary defects,
such as types of blindness and
deafness and certain diseases which
were thought to have a genetic basis,
such as Huntington's Chorea and
epilepsy

To further purify the race, women of
mixed blood were to be sterilized

Those with ideal Aryan characteristics
were bred like livestock
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.

Jews are not allowed to
have national health
insurance

The SS (Schutzstaffel) is
formed (Hitler’s personal
bodyguards)

Hitler becomes Der
Fuhrer and receives a
90% approval rating from
the people
1934
1935: Nuremberg Race Laws
Jews are not allowed to:
Marry or have sex hire Aryan women
with Aryans
as maids
have rights of
citizenship
Many Jews fled to other European nations or to the United States.
Most, however, stayed behind, convinced that as fully integrated
German citizens they were safe. In doing so, they failed to
understand the seriousness of their predicament.
Harassment
Harassment followed
the limitations
on the
civil rights of
Jewish citizens
Jewish children humiliated in the classroom
1936


SS Deathshead
division is created to
guard camps
Heinreich Himmler
is appointed Chief of
the German Police
1937

Jews are not allowed
to teach Germans

Jews are not allowed
to be accountants or
dentists

“Eternal Jew” exhibit
opened in Germany,
which promoted
stereotypes of Jews
and warned Germans
1938

Nazi troops enter
Austria (lebensraum =
union with Austria)

League of Nations
considers helping
Jews fleeing Hitler,
but no country will
take them

Jews are not allowed
to practice medicine
Why was Austria so important to Hitler?
1939
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Reinhard Heydrich is ordered to
speed up emigration of Jews
The St. Louis, a ship crowded
with 930 Jewish refugees, is
turned away by Cuba, the
United States and other
countries and returns to Europe
Jews must hand over all gold
and silver
Nazi troops seize
Czechoslovakia and invade
Poland (SPARK of WWII)
Forced labor decree issued and
all Jews must wear yellow stars
as a method of identification
Nazis begin euthanasia on sick
and disabled in Germany
“I ask nothing of Jews except that they should disappear”
Flight and Rescue
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/onlin
e/flight_rescue/
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/onlin
e/flight_rescue/story.htm
Operation T4: Euthanasia

The Nazis advocated the removal of
those who would not improve the
German race
and had no use in society – those who
Hitler called the "useless eaters"

This meant killing the mentally ill, the
terminally ill, and the physically and
mentally handicapped. They
euphemistically called this
"euthanasia,“ which is the practice of
intentionally ending a life in order to
relieve pain and suffering
Letter from chief of institution for feeble-minded in
Stetten to Reich Minister of justice, Dr. Frank: Sept. 6, 1940
Dear Reich Minister,
The measure being taken at present with mental
patients of all kinds have caused a complete
lack of confidence in justice among large groups
of people. Without the consent of relatives and
guardians, such patients are being transferred to
different institutions. After a short time they are
notified that the person concerned has died of
some disease...
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
Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jew
living in Paris, shot and killed a member of
the German Embassy in retaliation for the
poor treatment his father and his family
suffered at the hands of the Nazis: his
family, along with thousands of other Jews,
had been transported in boxcars and
dumped at the Polish border
In response, the German propaganda
minister, Joseph Goebbels, incited
Germans to "rise in bloody vengeance
against the Jews
1939
Grynszpan

Mob violence broke out as the German
police stood by and watched
 Storm troopers and members of the SS beat
and murdered Jews along with the mobs

Nearly 1000 synagogues were burned,
Jewish homes and businesses were
destroyed, and thousands of Jews were
rounded up during
KRISTALLNACHT =
“Night of Broken Glass” (Nov. 9, 1939)
Goebbels
Message from SS Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices & Field Offices
November 10, 1938
Regards: Measures against Jews tonight.
a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or
property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires
for the neighbourhoods).
b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted.
The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives
and to arrest looters.
c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will
be safeguarded at all cost against damage.
As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as
many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be
arrested in all districts. Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be
arrested. After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration
camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews
to the camps....
The burning of synagogues during Kristallnacht
Synagogues burned on the night of Kristallnacht
1940

German Jews, who had been
forced to live in ghettos, were
deported to Poland
Waiting for a drink of water in the Warsaw Ghetto, where water and food were in short supply

Ghettos of Lodz, Krakow and
Warsaw are sealed off (these
ghettos will be liquidated
starting in 1942); however,
some Jews remained in
ghettos until the end of WWII
(1945)
.

Jewish people were herded into ghettos (walled off
parts of the city in which the people could be more
easily controlled). Joseph Goebbels called the ghettos
"death boxes“

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.
This ration card from October 1941 entitled a resident to 300 calories a day
Children climbing the walls to smuggle food into the Warsaw Ghetto
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.
1941

Nazis invade the Soviet
Union (Operation
Barbarossa)

Hitler issues infamous
“Commissar Order”

SS Einsatzgruppen
follow advance of
German Army
“Liquidate (shoot/kill) all
Communist officials you
encounter!”
Einsatzgrubben

Not all murdered Jews
were killed in the camps

A mobile killing force
called the
Einsatzgrubben
conducted many
executions, particularly
in the Ukraine and
Baltic states
Jews from Lubny (Ukraine) assembled
just prior to execution
EINSATZ AREA OF OPERATIONS
Jewish victims who have been asked to
remove their outer garments prior to execution
Einsatzgrubben executions in the Ukraine
The ravine at Babi Yar, scene of mass executions in 1941. Ensatzgrubben killed 33,000 citizens of
Kiev by gunning them down on the edge of the ravine.
1942: The “Final Solution”
•
At the Wansee Conference on January 20, 1942, the decision of the “Final
Solution” was made to systematically evacuate Jews from all over occupied
Europe to camps in the east, where the entire Jewish population would be
exterminated
•
Three Phases:
•
•
Phase 1: Shooting – 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: Gas Vans – 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: Gassing – Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final
Solution by sending Jews to camps (two types: Concentration camps and
Extermination camps) – The most effective method for mass extermination
became gassing in specially constructed gas chambers (disguised as showers),
from which the bodies were removed to adjacent crematoriums
This plan of genocide 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
Jewish Resistance

Nazi-sponsored persecution and mass murder fueled
Jewish resistance to the Germans

Resistance took many forms:
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Organized armed resistance (e.g., Warsaw ghetto uprising)
Unarmed 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.)
Escaping from the ghettos into the forests (e.g., Bielski brothers)
Aid and rescue (e.g., parachutists were dropped in Germanoccupied regions to give whatever help they could to Jews in
hiding)
Spiritual resistance (e.g., attempts to preserve the history and
communal life of the Jewish people)
Rescuers

Foreign governments had policies to stay neutral or to
restrict immigration

Some diplomats and foreign officials disobeyed their
governments by issuing visas and other protective
documentation that allowed refugees to escape Germanoccupied 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
Rescuers
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Oskar Schindler (German industrialist)
Chiune Sugihara (Japanese consul general
posted in Lithuania)
Charles “Carl” Lutz (Swiss vice-consul in
Oskar Schindler
Budapest, Hungary)
Feng-Shan Ho (Chinese consul general in Vienna,
Austria)
Varian Fry (American journalist who volunteered to head
up the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private
American relief organization)
Raoul Wallenberg (Appointed to be the first secretary at
the Swedish legation in Budapest, Hungary, with a
mission to save as many Budapest Jews as possible)
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.”
Concentration &
Extermination Camps
(1940-1945)
Concentration Camps

In the next phase of the "final
solution," Nazis separated
out the young, the old, and
the ill and sent them to their
deaths (this process was
called “selection”)

The gas chamber was used
in the extermination camps
such as Auschwitz

Those who could work
obtained only a temporary
reprieve
Inmates at Sachenhausen wearing
identifying badges
AUSCHWITZ
Extermination camp 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
 Commanded by Rudolph Hoess
 Recorded 12,000 kills in one day

THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ
WERE ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS
TEETH WITH GOLD
PILES OF GLASSES
ZYKLON-B
GAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE COMPARED TO GAS.
DROPPED FROM CEILINGS IN GAS CHAMBERS.
Jewish prisoners are loaded onto the train from Westerbork, a transit camp, on their way to a
concentration camp
New prisoners arriving at the camps
Prisoners at Dachau
Children victims of Nazi medical experiments
A view of Majdanek, which served as a concentration camp and also as a killing center for Jews
The final destination for those who could not work, the gas chamber. This is the gas chamber at Flossenburg.
Ovens in crematorium
Nazis sift through the enormous
piles of clothing left behind by the
victims of a massacre (1941)
A warehouse full of shoes and clothing confiscated
from the prisoners and deportees gassed upon their
arrival. The Nazis shipped these goods to Germany.
A mass grave in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Auschwitz
Camp Totals
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
killed in camp
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
Auschwitz
Belzec
Chelmo
Liberation

In 1945, the camps were liberated by Allied
forces

In the last days the Nazis were still unwilling
to give up the plan to exterminate the Jews

They either executed Jews in the camps as
they abandoned them, death-marched them
into the interior of Germany, or cut off food
and water, leaving them to die
Children at Auschwitz. The lucky ones were liberated in 1945.
Mass grave site at Bergen-Belsen. The British found many dead when they
liberated the camp.
HOLOCAUST STATISTICS
10,000,000
9,000,000
8,000,000
7,000,000
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
JEWISH
POPULATION
BEFORE
SURVIVORS
STATISTICS BY COUNTRY
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
BEFORE
AFTER
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
POLAND
USSR
HUNGARY GERMANY
Jewish population before, Jewish population after
Holocaust
Summary
Elements Leading to the Holocaust:
 Totalitarianism combined with nationalism
 History of anti-Semitism
 Defeat in World War I and economic
depression blamed on German Jews
 Hitler’s belief in the master race
 Final solution: Extermination camps, gas
chambers
GENOCIDE
Other Examples of Genocide
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Armenians by leaders of the Ottoman Empire
Peasants, government and military leaders, and
members of the elite in the Soviet Union by
Joseph Stalin
Artists, technicians, former government officials,
monks, minorities, and other educated
individuals by Pol Pot in Cambodia
Tutsi minority by Hutu in Rwanda
An earlier act of
genocide to remember:
During World War I, the
Turkish government,
considering the Armenians
sympathetic to its Russian
foe, deported them in large
numbers from Anatolia
(Turkey). Massacres and the
hardships of the journey
resulted in the deaths of
between 600,000 and 1,000,000
Armenians in what has been
called the "first genocide of
modern times." Thousands
migrated to Russian Armenia,
where in 1918 an independent
Republic of Armenia was
established. In 1920, they
turned the government over to
the Communists rather than
surrender to the Turks, and the
Soviet Republic of Armenia
came into being.
Journal Project
Vilna Ghetto Fighters (1942-43)
 The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April – May,
1943)
 Treblinka Revolt (August 2, 1943)
 Auschwitz-Birkenau Revolt (October 7,
1944)
