Download The Holocaust - Livingston Public Schools

The Nazi Holocaust
Extermination of the Jews
The Holocaust
•Holocaust is a word of Greek
origin meaning “sacrifice by
fire”
•The Holocaust began in 1933
when Hitler and his Nazi party
ruled Germany. It ended in
1945 when Germany lost
World War II.
•The Allied Powers (US,
Russia, Britain, and France)
defeated the The Axis Powers
(Germany, Italy and Japan)
Pyramid of Hate
• This
pyramid shows
how hate can escalate
into something more
than just
discrimination but into
extermination.
So how did this all happen?
After losing World War I, Germany was in bad shape. They had to pay a lot of
money in damages and Germany experienced terrible poverty.
Unemployment in Germany 1928-1933
September 1928
650,000
September 1929
1,320,000
September 1930
3,000,000
September 1931
4,350,000
September 1932
5,102,000
January 1933
6,100,000
Racial Superiority
 Hitler knew that high unemployment
following World War I made
Germany an easy target to take over.
In his book, Mein Kampf (1925),
Hitler wrote about restoring
Germany to glory. He said in order
to this, Germany had to eliminate
undesirable people. Jews, Africans,
and Gypsies were among those he
considered undesirable.
A Great Public Speaker
 In his speeches he
played on fears that
Germans would one day
be outnumbered by
inferior people and
idealized a time when a
perfect group of Aryans
(blonde hair and blue
eyes) would take over.
Hitler himself had dark
hair and dark eyes—go
figure!
The War Against the Jews
 In order to keep the
German people on his
side, Hitler needed a
scapegoat. He blamed
the Jews for the
economic problems in
Germany
 When the Nazis began
to wage war against the
Jews, they used
propaganda.
From an anti-Semitic children's
book. The sign reads "Jews are not
wanted here"
Minor Harassment at first
 Harassment of Jews
began. German Jews
saw themselves as
Germans before Jews
and never believed
their homeland would
turn against them.
This is why they
tolerated this “minor
harassment.”
Jewish children humiliated in the classroom.
Followed by Registration…
 At first Jews were
required to register
and to wear yellow
stars as identification.
Followed by The Nuremberg
Race Laws
 The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935:
 Deprived Jews of rights of citizenship
 Prohibited marriage or sexual relations with
Aryans
 Limited where Jews could work, live, and
travel to.
 This was the beginning of Hitler’s “Final
Solution,” which was his plan to eliminate all
Jews as well as others he thought were
undesirable.
Followed by Demands for
Euthanasia and Sterilization
 Hitler called the mentally ill,
the terminally ill, and the
physically and mentally
handicapped the "useless
eaters." He wanted to kill them
all (euthanasia).
 To further purify the race,
women of mixed blood were
to be sterilized.
 Those with ideal Aryan
characteristics were bred like
livestock.
Then came the Ghettos…
•Towards the beginning of
World War II, Nazis began
ordering all Jews to live within
certain, specific areas. These
were called ghettos.
•Jews were forced out of their
homes, many of their
belongings were taken, and
they were forced into areas
confined with barbed wire
and guarded by Nazis.
Kristallnacht
“Night of Broken Glass”
•During the night of November 9-10,
1938, Nazis attacked Jews in Austria and
Germany in what has been named
“Kristallnacht”
•This night of violence included the
burning of Jewish temples and breaking
the windows of Jewish-owned business.
In addition, many Jews were physically
attacked
•Over thirty thousand Jews were arrested
on this one night.
A map of temples burned on the night of Kristallnacht
From bad to worse: Deportation
•Nazis would then order deportations
from the ghettos
•A thousand people per day were
loaded up in trains and sent to
concentration camps.
•To get them to cooperate, the Nazis
told the Jews they were being
relocated.
What was Deportation Like?
Boxcars/Cattle Cars
– These were called cattle
cars because people
were treated like cattle.
– 100+ people in one car
– Doors were bolted shut
– No place to sit down
– There were no bathroom
stops.
– No food or water given.
– Trips often took 3-7 days
and nights.
The Destination:
Concentration Camps
 In the next phase of the
"final solution" Nazis
separated out the young,
the old, and the ill and sent
them to their deaths. Those
who could work obtained
only a temporary reprieve.
They were put to work and
given scraps of food. The
average life span in a camp
was 3-6 months.
Inmates at Sachenhausen wearing
identifying badges
More about Concentration Camps
•Nazi Germany established about 20,000
camps to imprison its millions of victims
•The extermination camps were
designed for efficient mass murder.
Think of them as factories of death
•Jews and other “undesirables” were
initially gassed in mobile gas vans there
•To make these factories of death more
efficient, The Nazis constructed gas
chambers . They were designed to kill as
many people as possible in as short a
period of time as possible.
The final destination for those who could not work, the gas
chamber. This is the gas chamber at Flossenburg.
More about Gas Chambers…
• Prisoners were ordered to
strip naked before entering
the gas chambers. This way,
their clothes could be given to
new arrivals at the camps and
the corpses could be burned
in crematoriums, which were
built next to the gas
chambers. According to
calculations by the German
authorities, 1,440 corpses
could be burned in a
crematorium every 24 hours.
• Zyklon B – (a poison) was
used in the gas chambers.
Liberation (Freedom)
 In 1945, Germany surrendered and admitted
defeat in WW II. Hitler killed himself to
avoid being captured.
 The camps were liberated. Soldiers who
freed the prisoners described them as
walking corpses.
 Mass graves were discovered where the
bones of the dead had been dumped.
The impact of The Holocaust…
•It is estimated that eleven
million people were killed
during the Holocaust; six
million of these were Jews
•The Nazis killed
approximately two-thirds of
all Jews living in Europe
•An estimated 1.1 million
children were murdered in
the Holocaust