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the Holocaust
The power of words
• “The great masses of the people will more easily fall
victim to a big lie than a small one.”
• “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”
• “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”
• “ I believe today I am acting in the sense of the
Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am
doing the Lord’s work.”
- Adolf Hitler
The holocaust
*holocaust (noun): Greek word meaning
“sacrifice by fire”
*The Holocaust (proper noun): The
systematic murder of appr. 6 million Jews and
others by the Nazis and its collaborators.
The Holocaust
* Genocide:
• 6 million Jews were murdered during the
Holocaust, but did you know 6 million nonJews were also murdered?
destroying a group •
of people because
of their ethnic,
national, racial, or
religious identity
* Nazi target groups:
• Jews
• Gypsies
• Homosexuals (mostly men)
• Disabled - mentally & physically
• Polish, Russians
• Jehovah’s Witnesses (allowed to be
freed, but refused)
• Anyone who opposed the Nazi
government
• “Useless eaters”
Adolf Hitler
• Born April 20, 1889
• Upper Austria, not far from the German
border, in what was then Austria-Hungary
• His father, Alois Hitler, had been born
illegitimately. Until he was 40, Alois used
his mother's surname, Schicklgruber.
• Later, Alois took on his adoptive father's
surname.
Hitler in WW1
• Hitler volunteered to serve as a dispatch runner in WW1
where he was wounded and decorated for bravery,
receiving the Iron Cross
• Saw Jewish officials staying out of harms way
• He went back to the front and was temporarily blinded in
a mustard gas attack.
• (Because of the number of young men who were blinded by chemicals
inWW-1 it was outlawed; it’s why we went into Iraq. Hitler never used
chemical warfare even though he had no problem gassing the JewsHitler hated the idea of it.)
Hitler in WW1
• Hitler remained in the military and became an
Intelligence Agent assigned to influence other
soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers’
Party.
• became the party’s 55th member.
• He was soon discharged from the Army (cut-backs),
and joined the German Workers’ Party full time.
• It soon became apparent that Hitler was brilliant at
talking to large crowds.
The Nazi
(National Socialist German Workers')
Party
• Hitler designed the party’s banner of a swastika in a white
circle on a red background.
• He encouraged national pride, militarism, and a
commitment to the Volk and a racially "pure" Germany.
• Hitler condemned the Jews, exploiting anti-Semitic feelings
that had prevailed in Europe for centuries.
• He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist
German Workers' Party, called for short, the Nazi Party (or
NSDAP)
NAZI =
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
• (NSDAP) was founded in Germany on January 5,
1919.
• Its platform was based on militaristic, racial, antiSemitic and nationalistic policies.
How it began
• *Treaty of Versailles – peace treaty signed at the end of WW1, in
1918.
•
•
•
•
Stripped Germany of all Army, Navy, Air Force
Germany had to repair war damages- $33 billion
Germany had to acknowledge guilt for causing WWI
Germany could not manufacture any weapons.
• Economic status
• “Thousands and thousands of Germans have been made wretched
by the Jews and been reduced to poverty.”
• “Under extreme circumstances, people will look for extreme
solutions.”
• So, how do you pay off a war debt?
Hyperinflation
• 1914: $1 = 4 DM
• 1921: $1 = 163 DM
• Nov. 1923: $1 = 130 Billion DM
• Dec. 1923: $1 = 4.2 Trillion DM
• the American dollar was worth
4,210,500,000,000 German marks
• Cost of a loaf of bread = 200 Billion DM
Why Jews?
• * Anti-Semitism: hostility toward or
discrimination against Jews
• Popular around the world; not a new concept
• Don’t like those who are “different”
• Anti-Semitism reached terrifying heights
with Hitler’s rise to power.
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
• Documented minutes from a meeting with the Elders of Zion,
describing a Jewish plan for global domination.
• “Proved” a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, start depressions, and
start wars.
• It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple
languages.
• Henry Ford funded the printing of 500,000 copies to be distributed
throughout the US in the 1920’s.
• Adolf Hitler and the Nazis publicized the text as though it were a
valid document, although it had already been exposed as a fraud.
After the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, it ordered the text to
be studied in German classrooms.
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
• Hitler used the Protocols as his primary justification for
initiating the Holocaust—his "warrant for genocide”.
• “The goal of the Jew is to make himself the ruler of
humanity.”– Hitler
• When the war was over, Nazi leader, Erich von dem BachZelewsky said, “This is the greatest lie of anti-Semitism
because it gives the lie…that the Jews are conspiring to
dominate the world and that they are so highly organized. In
reality, they had no organization of their own at all...they were
taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone as
unsuspectingly to its disaster. Nothing was prepared.
Absolutely nothing.”
It’s “science”!
• * Hitler identified Jews as a race, not a religious group!
• Jewish people could not simply change religions, for their “defect” was in
their genes.
• Race is a genetic distinction, and refers to people with shared ancestry and
shared genetic traits. You can't change your race; it's in your DNA.
• *Eugenics: the study of methods of improving the quality
of the human race, especially by selective breeding.
• Based on early 20th century understanding of the science of genetics,
eugenicists believed that people should be bred as farmers breed
animals: deliberately weeding out “inferior” traits.
• The Nazis believed that they could create a “a master race”
The master race
Aryan race:
The Nazis believed that people of
Northern European ancestry –
especially those with blue eyes
and blonde hair – were superior
to all other people.
In 1933, there were few people of
African or Asian ancestry living
in Germany. There were,
however, 500,000 Jews who
seemed to threaten “racial
purity”.
How do you know
who is Jewish?
• Lived in the country for centuries
• Fully integrated in society
• Jews considered themselves to be
Germans
• November 1935 German churches
begin to collaborate with Nazis by
supplying records
• Data processing was used to take a
census in all German territory that
included questions on religious
heritage
Nuremberg laws
• * The Nuremberg Laws: established
officially who was a Jew, based on
American slavery.
• If you have a Jewish ancestor, you are a
Jew
• “Half” and “Quarter” Jews
• Considered subhuman
• One use for this classification was to
permit or to deny couples the right to
marry (and thus to reproduce)
• 1935: Jewish Newspapers could no
longer be sold
• 1936: Jews lost the right to vote
• 1938: Jews had to surrender drivers’
licences & car registrations
It’s “science”!
• Because the inferior
aspect of Jews was in
their genes, the Nazis
could tell who was
Jewish based on
physically features.
• Along with synagogue
records, kits like these
were used to identify
who was Jewish.
Prejudice  murder
Ghettos
•By 1939, the Nazis were thinking
of ways to get the Jews out of
Germany.
•Created mandatory“Jewish
Quarters” in Poland.
*Ghettos: section of a city where
Jews from the surrounding areas
were forced to reside, surrounded
by barbed wire or walls.
Concentration camps
• *Final Solution: The code name Nazis used
for the total annihilation of the Jews.
• Did not specify what the solution would be,
but it permitted Nazis to handle “the Jewish
question” in ways that went beyond
“emigration and evacuation”.
• Starting in 1941, Jews were rounded up under the excuse of a “resettlement”- and
sent to camps.
Concentration camps
• In the ghetto, Jews were
told that they were being
taken into “protective
custody” and beings sent
to work.
• They were told to bring
clothes, money, food, etc.
(why?) and were herded
onto train cars.
• Conditions were horrific;
average 4 days
The camps
• *Concentration/Labor: established for people to
do work (usually useless) and hold POW’s.
• With very insufficient food and terrible conditions, the
goal was “death by work”.
• Death Camp: one purpose – mass murder.
Life in the camps
• Minimum working day of eleven hours in all
concentration camps.
An end to the madness
• * By 1945, Allied troops were invading Europe and
getting closer to discovering the camps.
• Nazis started burning and destroying camps and all
evidence, which included any surviving prisoners.
• “Death Marches”
• As English, American, and Russian troops advanced,
they came upon these camps and liberated anyone still
alive.
Hitler’s death
• Suicide - April 30 1945
• Making him 56 years old
• 5’8”
Nuremberg triAls
• *On November 22, 1945, the Nuremberg Trials
began.
• Many SS guards claimed after the war that they had
just “been following orders.”
• The Commander of Auschwitz was asked if the Jews
whom he had murdered had in any way deserved
their fate. He answered, “Don’t you see, we SS men
were not supposed to think about these things…We
were all so trained to obey orders without even
thinking…”
Europe in 1938
Obligation to Help?
“No country is going to sacrifice its men for nothing and
certainty not in the interests of others.” – Anne, pg. 238
•How much did the world know?
• Even most of those taken to the camps to die did not know what
was happening.
•How much could information could get around?
• Once you were in a camp, you did not leave. There was no one to
tell the story of what was really happening.
•At what point do you interfere?
• When are conditions bad enough to sacrifice your own men?
“The most dangerous part is the bystander because
neutrality always helps the killer.” – Holocaust
survivor Miles Lerman
The U. .A.
• Anti-Semitism
• How much different than slavery?
• Legal segregation: different schools, different parts of the bus
• Did not accept full immigration quota
• Current condition
• The Great Depression
• Did NOT want to enter another war
• How much did we know was going on?
• No instant media (Germany controlling what information got out anyway)
• Real, hard evidence in 1942 (Riegner Report)
• Reports were “too horrible to believe”!
• Simply did not see it coming
• “Unfathomable”
The Riegner Report
“Received alarming report that in Fuhrer's headquarters plan
discussed and under consideration according to which all Jews
in countries occupied or controlled Germany numbering 3 1/2
- 4 million should after deportation and concentration in east
be exterminated at one blow to resolve once and for all the
Jewish question in Europe.
Action reported planned for autumn; methods under
discussion including prussic acid.
We transmit information with all necessary reservation as
exactitude cannot be confirmed.
Informant stated to have close connections with highest
German authorities and his reports generally speaking
reliable.”
Timeline of WWII
(Germany’s perspective)
• 1938: invades Austria
• “German people anyway”
• 1939: invades Checlozivakia
• Non-German; people start to worry
 1940: Battle of Britain
 Only ones fighting
against Hitler
 Constantly bombed
• 1939: invades Poland
• Britain and France declare war
• “Phony war”
• 1940: invades France
• Most powerful army in the world!
• Defeated in under 6 weeks
(“uh-oh” – U.S.A.)
 1941: Japan attacks U.S
 U.S. declares war on
Japan, so Germany
declares war on U.S.
 Not to rescue, b/c we
were attacked
Say What?!
• 3 of Hitler’s top army officials were
“half Jews”.
• Hitler’s personal doctor was Jewish.
• Several members of the SS, including
the commander Ernst Rohm, were
openly homosexual.
• Sturm Abteilung (Stormtroopers)
abbreviated to SA
• The SA (Sturm Abteilung 'Storm battalion) was
formed from front line Nazi Party activists to protect
Nazi Party candidates who were campaigning during
elections. Their role included using violence against
political opponents. At its height, during WW2, the
SA contained some 4 million members.
The SS (Schutzstaffel 'Protection Echelon') began as
Hitler's personal bodyguard. It owed its loyalty directly
to Hitler himself, rather than the Nazi Party.