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NIGHT
By Elie Weisel
EARLY YEARS
• Elie Wiesel was born
in 1928 in the town of
Sighet, now part of
Romania.
• During World War II,
he, with his family
and other Jews from
the area, were
deported to the
German
concentration and
extermination
camps,
http://my.brainshark.com/Oprah-and-Elie-Weisel-at-Auscwitz-Full-Movie-YouTube-538620352
•Lived in France
•Learned his two oldest sisters were alive
•Vowed not to talk for 10 years about his experiences
•1955 wrote- Un die Welt hot geshvign
silent)
(And the world kept
•Wrote another version (night) 127 pgs
•Became a U.S. citizen on 1963
•Became chairman of the U.S. Holocaust
•Awarded Congressional Medal of Freedom
•Awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1986
•Lives in NY with wife and son
Memorial Council
THE
•United States
•Germany
•Great Brittan
•Italy
•Russia
•Japan
• The Nazi Party, started as a gang of unemployed
soldiers in 1919 and became the legal government of
Germany by 1933. In fourteen years, a once obscure
corporal, Adolf Hitler, would become the Chancellor of
Germany.
After the end of World War I, it grew from a small political group to the most powerful party in
Germany.
Once Hitler became Chancellor and later Reichsführer, he changed Germany's political,
social, and economic structure.
Confining Jews to ghettos was another critical step in Hitler's Final Solution.
The concentration camps were Hitler's final step in the annihilation of the Jews.
People resisted by any means possible, from stealing a slice of bread to sabotaging Nazi
installations.
•World War I ended with total of 37 million casualties
•German propaganda led to a sense of injured national
pride.
•Leaders claimed Germany had been "stabbed in the
back“ by Communists and Jews.
•When a new government, the Weimar Republic , tried to
establish a democracy, extremists struggled violently for
control.
•The new regime could neither handle the depressed
economy nor the rampant lawlessness and disorder.
•Allies punished Germany severely.
•Treaty of Versailles disarms Germany and forces them to pay reparations
to France and Britain
•The German Workers' Party gained popularity and was joined by Adolf
Hitler.
•He rose to leadership through emotional and captivating speeches.
•Encouraged national pride, militarism, and a commitment to a racially
"pure" Germany.
•Condemned the Jews, exploiting antisemitic feelings that had prevailed
in Europe for CENTURIES.
•Changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers'
Party, (Nazi Party)
•Hitler fails to overthrow local authorities in Munich, (the Beer Hall
Putsch)
•The Nazi Party and its leaders, including Hitler, were jailed and
charged with high treason.
• However, Hitler uses the courtroom at his public trial as a
propaganda platform, ranting against the Weimar government.
•At the end of the 24-day trial Hitler gains support for his cause.
•He gets five years in prison, with eligibility for early parole but is
released after one year.
•Other Nazi leaders were given light sentences also.
•Mein Kampf (My Struggle) , is published which details Hitler's
radical ideas nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.
•Became the ideological base for the Nazi’s murderous
practices.
•Formally resurrected the Nazi Party
•Paul von Hindenburg was elected president and Germany
stabilized.
•Hitler emerged as the Nazi’s sole leader, the one to whom
members swore loyalty unto death.
•The Party began with 27,000 members
• The SA was the paramilitary unit of the Party, a propaganda
arm that became known for its strong arm tactics of street
brawling and terror.
•The SS was established as an elite group with special duties
within the SA
•The Great Depression begins and wrought worldwide economic, social, and
psychological consequences.
•The Weimar democracy collapses.
•SS became organized under Heinrich Himmler
•Hindenburg was reelected (but Hitler received 37% of the vote. )
• The SA brownshirts, about 400,000, caused most of the violence.
• Domestically, during the next six years, Hitler transformed Germany into a police state.
• Germany began rearmament of its military ( in violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.)
•President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor.
•February 27 -the Reichstag building burns.
•Nazis immediately claimed that this was the beginning of a Communist
revolution. (many historians to believe that Nazis actually set, or help set the fire.)
•Leads Hitler to convince Hindenburg to issue a Decree for the Protection of
People and State that granted Nazis unlimited power, the foundation for a police
state.
•Within months the Dachau concentration camp was created and Communists,
Socialists, and labor leaders were arrested.
•Became a training center for concentration camp guards and later
commandants.
•A Special Courts was created to punish political dissentents.
•Jews were barred from holding positions in the civil service, legal and medical
professions, and in teaching and university positions.
•Jews felt increasingly isolated from the rest of German society.
•The SA (Sturmabteilung) had been instrumental in Hitler's rise to power. There were
2.5 million SA men compared with 100,000 men in the regular army.
•The regular German army disliked SA.
•Hitler was afraid of a rebellion so he curried their favor by attacking the leadership
of the SA in the "Night of the Long Knives."
•Hitler arrested Ernst Röhm (leader of SA) and scores of other SA leaders and had
them shot by the SS, which now rose in importance.
•On August 2, Hindenburg died.
• Hitler combined the offices of Reich Chancellor and President, declaring himself
Führer and Reich Chancellor, or Reichsführer (Leader of the Reich).
•Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws.
• These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and
separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically.
•Jews were defined as a separate race under "The Law for the
Protection of German Blood and Honor."
•Being Jewish was now determined by ancestry;(race, not religious
beliefs or practices, to define the Jewish people.)
•This law forbade marriages or sexual relations between Jews and
Germans.
•Many thousands of Germans who had not previously considered
themselves Jews found themselves defined as "non-Aryans."
•Berlin hosted the Olympics and used
them to promote a favorable image
of Nazism to the world
•Leni Riefenstahl created, Olympia, to
promote Nazi propaganda.
• In it, she portrayed Hitler as a god.
•The Nazis guaranteed that they
would allow German Jews to
participate.
•Two Germans with some Jewish
ancestry were on the team, but
Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann, one
of the world's most accomplished high
jumpers, was not.
•In March, Germany took over Austria w/o bloodshed and w/their approval.
•No countries protested this violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
•In September Hitler decided he wanted Sudetenland.( Czech.)
•Hitler waited until he was certain that France and Britain would not intervene.
•He threatened British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with war if he did not
receive the territory.
•At the Munich Conference, Britain, France and, Italy chose appeasement rather
than military confrontation.
•Germany occupied the Sudetenland on October 15
•In Germany, open antisemitism became increasingly accepted,
climaxing in the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) on November 9.
•This was a free-for-all against the Jews, where synagogues, Jewish
businesses, and homes were destroyed,
•As many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration
camps
•The Nazis further persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for the
damages of Kristallnacht .
•On September 1, Poland is invaded, officially starting World War II.
• Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
•Hitler's armies used the Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, a combination of
armored attack accompanied by air assault.
•Before the British and French could help, Poland collapsed.
•This established the New Order (a plan to abuse and eliminate the
undesirables).
•Hitler intended that Poles were to become the slaves of Germany
•Nazi propaganda said Jews were natural carriers of all types of diseases.
•Five major ghettos were created. (Warsaw, Lódz, Kraków, Lublin, and
Lvov.)
•On November 23, General Governor Hans Frank declared all Jews ten
years and older had to wear the Star of David on armbands or pinned to
the chest or back for easy identification.
•In October, deportations began to major ghettos in Poland and
further east.
•Many of the ghetto dwellers were from the local area.
• Ghetto life was wretched and disease was rampant.
•Many starved to death.
•Many resisted dehumanization.
•Parents continued to educate their children and hold religious
services. (punishable by death)
•The Nazis established the Theresienstadt (or Terezín) ghetto in
northwestern Czechoslovakia as a so-called model Jewish settlement
to counter rumors in the international community about the poor
conditions in the ghettos.
•In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile
killing squads called Einsatzgruppen.
•The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units with 500 to 900 men each which
followed the German troops
•By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they
had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews.
•In September 1941, while waiting for the completion of Chelmno (1st camp)
the Nazis began using gassing vans--trucks loaded with groups of people who
were locked in and asphyxiated by carbon monoxide.
•The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for
killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional
anguish.
•On December 7, the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) order was issued to
deter resistance by allowing military courts to swiftly sentence resisters to
death.
•In January SS official Reinhard Heydrich held
the Wannsee Conference and the Nazi officials
agreed with the SS plans for the transport and
destruction of all 11 million Jews of Europe (the
genocide)
•Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and
Sobibór began operations
•Jews were destroyed upon arrival. About 2.7
million died.
• These murders were done secretly by claiming
that Jews were being resettled in the East.
•They went so far as to charge Jews for train fare
•Was a struggle for physical
existence.
•Escape
•spiritual resistance to help keep
their dignity & heritage
•Hiding
•Smuggling
Printing motivational writings
•guerrilla warfare (E. Europe)
•Joseph Stalin established an
underground movement in the
occupied territories to fight the
enemy (partisians).
•In June, a central headquarters
was established
•The Jewish Fighter Organization (ZOB) fought the Nazi’s for
a month, using weapons smuggled into the ghetto.
•The Nazis responded by bringing in tanks and machine
guns, burning blocks of buildings, destroying the ghetto,
and ultimately killing many of the last 60,000 Jewish ghetto
residents.
•The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first large uprising by
an urban population in German-occupied territory.
•The following month, 600 Jewish and Russian prisoners
attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. About 60
survived and joined the Soviet partisans. An embarrassed
Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers closed down
and the camp leveled.
•On October 7, the sonderkommando (prisoners forced to
handle the bodies of gas chamber victims) succeeded in
blowing up one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz.
•All of the saboteurs were captured and killed. Resistance
continued until the end of the war.
•Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others from the Nazi
death sentence was shot or publicly hanged as a warning to
others.
•Allied troops entered Nazi-occupied territories, and
liberation transpired.
•The troops were shocked at what they found.
• Large ditches filled with bodies, rooms of baby shoes, and
gas chambers with fingernail marks on the walls all testified
to Nazi brutality.
•General Eisenhower insisted on photographing and
documenting the horror so that future generations would
not ignore history and repeat its mistakes.
•He also forced villagers neighboring the death and
concentration camps to view what had occurred in their
own backyards