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Ch. 11.3
The Holocaust & Nazi Racial
Ideology
The Holocaust
• State-sponsored systematic murder of six
million Jews, more than two million
Soviets, and 3 million people belonging to
other identified groups, including: political
prisoners, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals,
mentally & physically disabled, Jehovah's
Witnesses, among others.
• Term: “genocide” coined in 1943 to
describe the specific targeting of
ethnic/racial groups.
Life Before the Nazis
• Jews were integrated into
German society
• 0.07% of the population
in Germany
• Less integrated in
Eastern Europe
• Anti-Semitism more
“intellectual” in Western
Europe; more
violent/aggressive in E.
Europe: Pogroms
1933 – 1939
• Dictatorship under the Third Reich
• Early Stages of Persecution
• The First Concentration Camps
1939 - 1945
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World War II
Murder of the Disabled
Persecution & Murder of Jews
Ghettos
Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Squads)
Post-1945
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Postwar Trials
Displaced Persons Camps and Emigration
Pogroms
Palestine & the British Response
United Nations, May 18, 1948
Middle East Turmoil
The Holocaust & Nazi Racial
Ideology: Basic Assumptions
• Survival of the race
depends on:
• Race purity: there is a
hierarchy of races;
some are more
Defilement: Women & Girls, the Jews
valuable than others “Race
are your ruin!” (1936)
• Seizure of territory to
expand population
The Image of Jews in Nazi Racial
Ideology
• Jews are a race
• Jews were special enemies of the German
people
• Unlike other races, Jews had no living space of
their own
• Jews sought to dominate host peoples by
destroying the nation-state and establishing
Jewish world domination
• The goals of Jews, by definition, were the
genetic bastardization of all peoples and the
elimination of all states
Anti-Semitic Propaganda
• Nazi stereotype depicting
Jews as both money
lenders and communists
Throughout history the nations
defended themselves against Jewish
usury! (1936)
Vote Christian Socialist: German
Christians Save Austria! (1920)
1933 – 1939: Early Stages of
Persecution
• 1933:
– Hitler appointed Chancellor
– Dachau opens
– April 1, 1933 Boycott
• 1935: Nuremberg Laws
– Took away Jewish citizenship & civil rights; intermarriage
prohibited; all Jews forced to wear yellow Star of David for
identification
• 1938: Kristallnacht
– Nazi campaign of terror against German Jews; shops &
synagogues destroyed; Jews killed & injured; 30,000 Jewish
males sent to concentration camps
• 1939: Invasion of Poland (Sept. 1) marks WWII in
Europe
– Only 500,000 Jews in Germany; to have access to European
Jews – Hitler must have a war; seen as an opportunity to
progress Nazi racial ideology
Emigration
• Passengers aboard the
“St. Louis”. These
refugees from Nazi
Germany were forced to
return to Europe after
both Cuba & the United
States denied them entry.
The passengers were
sent to France, the
Netherlands, Belgium,
and Britain. Early
summer, 1939 – by 1940
all those countries except
Britain were under Nazi
occupation & many
passengers of the St.
Louis died.
1939 – 1941: Ghettoization &
Concentration of Jews (Stage 2)
• Continuation of identification by racial
criteria
• Expulsion to E. Europe
• 1939: 1st Ghetto established in Poland
after invasion
• 1940: Lodz & Warsaw are largest ghettos
– Loss of dignity, dehumanization, loss of
privacy, inability to protect family or earn living
Ghettos
Ghettos, or confined areas within a city, are established
in occupied eastern Europe (1939). Jews from
throughout Europe are forced from their homes and
required to live in ghettos.
1942 Wannsee Conference
• In January 1942, 15 top
Nazi officials met to
discuss plans for
extermination of Europe’s
11 million Jews.
• At that time, 80% of Jews
that were to die were still
alive; 15 mos. Later they
were dead.
• Year of mass
deportations from ghettos
to camps.
Deportations
Deportations & Implementation of the
Final Solution: 1942 – 1945(Stage 3)
• Nazis systematically round up
Jews throughout Europe and
transport them to death camps
in Eastern Europe as part of
implementation of the “Final
Solution”. Six million are
killed.
• The Nazis called this
“resettlement”
• Prior to building of death
camps, Nazis used mobile
killing squads: Einsatzgruppen
– Between June 1941 – Dec.
1941 they killed 1mn. Jews,
but Himmler, head of SS, was
concerned about how long it
was taking & the toll on the
shooters; led to the Death
Camps
Death Camps: Poland
• Chelmno opened in Dec. ‘41
• After Wannsee Conference 5 new death camps
opened
– Sobibor, March ’42, 250,000
– Belzec, March ’42, 500,000+
– Treblinka, June ’42, 700,000+
– Majdenek, June ’42, 125,000
– Auschwitz, 1942, 1,500,000+
Auschwitz-Birkenau
This was the largest camp & was actually 3
camps; 1st for Polish political prisoners, 2nd
built for Final Solution, 3rd (BUNA) for slave
labor. The only camp that tattooed. Most
prisoners survived only a few weeks or
maybe months at Auschwitz. Died of gas
chambers, dehydration, starvation, labor,
disease, medical experiments, and some by
suicide. It was the deadliest camp.
Hungarian prisoners arrive at
Auschwitz for selection, May 1944
Hungarian Jews on their way to
the gas chambers, May 1944
Prisoners at forced labor at the Siemens
factory, Auschwitz 1940 - 44
Bombing Raid on Auschwitz, August 1944
Stage IV: Liberation 1945
• Allies liberated survivors of camps;
approximately 300,000 Jews
Liberation
• Multitudes interned in
Displaced Persons
Camps in Germany &
Italy to find family
members
• Return to home or
immigration and
resettlement to other
countries, especially of
those wanting to avoid
Soviet regimes: Israel
(Palestine), the United
States, Canada,
Australia, South America
• Integration into new host
countries: struggle & readjustment
An American soldier
liberates prisoners
at Mauthausen
Children being liberated by Soviet
soldiers from Auschwitz, January 1945
DP Camps
• As early as 1943, Allied forces
began drafting plans to meet
the challenge of liberating,
rehabilitating, and repatriating
Dining Room at a DP
the millions of displaced
Camp, Germany 1945
persons (DPs) who would
come under Allied control.
• 6mn. refugees were
successfully repatriated; but
1mn. refused to return to their
pre-war homes
• By 1948, the majority settled in
the new state of Israel and in
the U.S. The last DP Camp
closed in 1952.
Jewish orphans at a DP
Camp, Germany 1947
British soldiers guard
Jewish refugees on their
way to a DP Camp,
Germany 1947
War Crimes Trials 1945 - 1946
• International Military Tribunals
were held throughout Europe;
the most famous were the
Nuremberg Trials for Nazi
Party Officials judged by each
of the 4 Allies
• The IMT tried 22 "major"
German war criminals on
charges of conspiracy, crimes
against peace, war crimes, and
crimes against humanity. The
IMT defined crimes against
humanity as "murder,
extermination, enslavement,
deportation...or persecutions
on political, racial, or religious
grounds."
Opening
statements at
the IMT in
Nuremberg,
1945
Witness
testifies to
being
kidnapped by
Germans from
Czechoslovakia
Nazi Karl
Brandt
testifies
Defendant’s Dock
Resistance
• Armed Resistance:
– Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
– Sobibor & Treblinka Uprisings
– Jews joined resistance fighters
in occupied countries
• Acts of Sabotage
– Disrupting war effort in forced
labor camps
– Document forgers, food
smugglers
– Hiding & escape
• Spiritual resistance
– Attempts to maintain Jewish
identity, history, and culture
despite attempts of Nazis to
eradicate Jewish life from
human memory
– Underground schools and
libraries
– Documenting the Holocaust
L: Survivors of Treblinka
Uprising. B: Resistance
fighters living/hiding in forest
Quiz Study Guide
Vocabulary:
• Aryan
• Lebensraum (as 1st
“solution” to the “Jewish
problem”
• Genocide
• Auschwitz
• Concentration & Death
camps (where were they
built & why there)
• Einsatzgruppen
Events:
• Kristallnacht, Nov. 1938
• Targets of the Holocaust
• Final Solution, 1942-45
– Two tactics used to
implement
• Types of Resistance
• Three Stages of the
Holocaust
– Identify each stage by time
period & major events
• What conditions allowed
an event like the
Holocaust to occur
(consider historical
stereotypes, political
policies & laws, and
military situation of the
time)