Download Holocaust Webquest KEY

Holocaust Webquest KEY
Go to the following website: http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/
Click on the web links for each topic on The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students webpage and answer the
questions.
Click on Hitler Comes to Power
1. Why was the mood grim in Germany in the 1930s?
o A worldwide economic depression hit Germany (Great Depression), millions of people did not
have jobs
2. What percent of the vote did the Nazi party get in 1924? What percent of the vote did the Nazi party get
in 1932? What did the 1933 elections allow the Nazi party to do?
o 3%, 33%, it allowed Adolf Hitler to become chancellor of Germany
Click on The Nazi Terror Begins
3. What rights did individuals lose in Germany under the Nazis? Why?
o Freedom of the press, speech, and assembly, right to privacy; Germany became a dictatorship
Click on SS Police State
4. What are the SS? What did they do to people who opposed the Nazis?
o The SS were the German secret police and Hitler’s personal body guards. The SS would
arrest and kill anyone oppose the Nazis.
5. What did the Gestapo do? Who created/led them?
o The Gestapo would torture and kill anyone opposed to the Nazis. SS Chief Heinrich
Himmler led them
6. What was Dachau? What did it become the ideal model for?
o Dachau was an abandoned factory that became a prison camp. It was the model for the
concentration and SS camps.
Click on Nazi Propaganda and Censorship
7. What did the Nazis do to any viewpoint they felt threatened by?
o They were censored or eliminated from all media
8. Who was the Nazi Propaganda Minister?
o Dr. Joseph Goebbels
9. What types of books were burned by the Nazis starting in 1933?
o Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jewish books and any books that the Nazis disliked
Click on Nazi Racism
10. What was the “Germanic race” called? What did the ideal person look like?
o The Aryan master race, blond and blue eyed
11. Explain how the Nazis began to put their racial ideology into practice.
o Spread it through posters, on the radio, movies, schools and newspapers. They limited
rights of many people.
Click on The Murder of the Handicapped
12. Explain the euthanasia program? Who were targets? How many people died?
o Patients were examined for disease; if they were considered inferior they were killed. The
mentally ill, physically handicapped, about 200,000 people died.
Click on German Rule in Occupied Europe
13. What was Germany planning to do with the territories they conquered in the East?
o They were going to resettle the territory with German colonists.
14. How were people in Poland and other Eastern European countries treated compared to those in
“Germanic” countries? Why?
o They were treated harshly and often Eastern Europeans were regarded as slave labor
Click on Jews in Prewar Germany
15. About how many Jews lived in Germany in 1933, what percent of the German population were they?
o 500,000; Less than 1%
Click on Jewish Life in Europe before the Holocaust
16. How many Jews lived in areas that would be occupied by Germany during World War II? What percent
of the Jewish population would be dead in these occupied countries by the end of the war?
o 9 million Jews, 66% would be dead
17. How were the Jews of Eastern and Western Europe different? What two European countries had the
largest Jewish population just before World War II?
o Jews in Eastern Europe lived in more separate communities; Jew in Western Europe
adopted mainstream culture. Poland and the Soviet Union had the largest Jewish
communities.
Click on Antisemitism
18. What is Antisemitism? What problems have Jews been blamed for throughout history?
o Discrimination against Jews. Blamed for the death of Jesus and the Black Death
19. Who was Karl Lueger and what did he do? Who looked up to him?
o A politician who preached anti-Semitism, Adolf Hitler
Click on The "Final Solution"
25. What was the “Final Solution”?
o The Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people
26. List the 6 extermination camps. About how many Jewish people died in the Holocaust?
o Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenan, Mahdanek
o 6 million Jewish people died
Click on Ghettos in Poland
27. What were the Ghettos used for?
o They were used to isolate and keep Jews in one place.
Click on Life in the Ghettos
28. What was life like for adults in the Ghettos?
o Life was unbearable, people begged for food.
29. What was life like for children in the Ghettos? What did they do?
o Children begged for food, smuggled food. They played and attended schools as well
Click on The Mobile Killing Squads
30. What country was invaded by Germany on June 22, 1941?
o Soviet Union
31. Who were the victims of the SS Special action squads? How did they kill their victims?
o Jews were, they were rounded up and shot or gassed
Click on At the Killing Centers
32. What types of people were usually the first to die at a concentration camp?
o Young children, babies, handicapped, pregnant woman, the sick and elderly
33. How did people profit from the corpses of the victims?
o Hair was made into rope, gold fillings were taken
Click on Auschwitz
34. Explain the importance of Auschwitz to the Nazis? How many people died at Auschwitz?
o It was a large complex, and used for forced labor. More than a million people died
35. What type of experiments did Dr. Josef Mengele perform on people? Who were his typical victims?
o Typical victims were twins, children. Organs, eye color, reaction to pain were compared
between twins.
Click on Prisoners of the Camps
36. What other groups of people besides Jews were victims of the Nazi concentration camp system?
o Communists, Socialists, criminals, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals
Click on Forced Labor
37. Explain the forced labor system. Why did Germany use forced labor?
o They forced concentration camp workers to do hard labor, forced labor was free, the
people were seen as slaves
Click on Death Marches
38. Why did the death marches happen?
o Germany moved concentration camp workers into Germany as the Allies started wining
World War II in 1944 and 1945.
Click on Liberation
39. What happened to half of the survivors of Auschwitz within a few days of being freed?
o They died
Click on The Survivors
40. How were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust treated after WWII, especially in Poland?
o Many were physically attacked, because people did not give back Jewish homes and
property.
41. What country was created in 1948? Why?
o Israel was created as a Jewish homeland or nation
Click on The Nuremberg Trials
42. What were the Nuremberg Trials? What was their point?
o They were trials of Nazis captured during and after World War II to show that Nazis would
be held accountable for their crimes
43. Did Nazis escape justice? Where did many flee?
o Some Nazis escaped to countries like the United States
Click on The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
50. Explain what happened during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
o On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police
entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters
fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters were able to hold
out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly
crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot,
and the remainder were deported to camps
Click on Killing Center Revolts
51. Why do you think there were so few successful uprisings in the camps?
o Fear, few weapons were available
52. What were the jobs of the Sonderkommando?
o They were Jews who were forced to burn the bodies of the deceased