Download Sec. 3: The Holocaust

World War II, 1930-1945
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Mein Kamph
Nuremberg Laws
Kristallnact
Ghettos
Concentration Camps
Extermination Camps
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In Mein Kamph, Hitler laid out his plans for
Germany, and the New German Empire, he
called the Third Riech
Not only did he lay out this plan, but he also
developed a scapegoat for all of Germany’s
problems, the JEWS.
He also explained why and how the jews and
other inferior peoples were holding Germany
back.
Hitler rose to power by using Jewish people
as scapegoat
• Longstanding tradition of blaming Jews
• “Stab in the back” theory about Versailles Treaty
• Pseudo-scientific view of genetics (Aryan super
race)
Nuremberg Laws (1930s)
 Created a separate legal status for German Jews
 Thousands of Jews left Germany during this time;
others were trapped & could not emigrate
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The night of broken glass
Germans raided Jewish businesses, homes
and synagogues and confiscated property
and money from the Jewish people
Genocidal plan to eliminate Jewish “menace”
 Development of the “ghetto” (confined area of a city) by
walling section of city in and preventing free travel to and
from (Warsaw Ghetto in Poland was largest…400,000 Jews
confined)
 The Concentration Camp
▪ Brutal conditions took grizzly toll due to starvation, disease,
medical experimentation, forced labor
▪ Transitioned too Death Camps later
 Mobile “Killing Units”
▪ Armed units of German soldiers who sought out and murdered
thousands in mass executions; buried in mass graves (Babi Yar,
35,000 Jewish men, women, & children killed in USSR, near Kiev1941)
The mass extermination of the Jews was too costly,
time-consuming, and was leaving behind too much
evidence …clearly, a new system was necessary-the
death camp
 Camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, & Sobibor
were built with gas shower rooms and crematorium ovens
to eliminate the thousands of corpses
Other minority groups targeted for extermination:
 Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally handicapped, and
Russians
Results: around 6 million Jews & 5 million other minority
groups eliminated
I thought I had seen everything. I was a
hardened soldier. I had been in combat since
October 1944, and I had seen death and
destruction that was unparalleled in modern
times. But this --- there are no words to
describe this.”
Captain Reid Draffen
U.S. Army