Download The Euthanasia Program

The Euthanasia Program
•In Nazi Terms: a clandestine murder program which
targeted for the systematic killing of mentally and
physically disabled persons living in institutional
settings in Germany.
•Euthanasia means “Good Death”
•National Socialist Germany’s first mass killing
•Began the program 2 years prior to the beginning of
the Holocaust.
•Parents and Physicians were told NOT to report
newborns who showed signs of being mentally or
physically disabled.
•People were rounded up on busses/trucks, were
taken to specific facilities and gassed.
•Took about 200,000 lives in all it’s phases.
Persecution & Murder of Jews
• Approx. 6 Million Jews killed during Holocaust.
• Holocaust => Sacrifice by Fire
• Gas Chambers, disease, starvation, neglect and
forced labor.
• By 1945, Germans and contributors had killed about
2 out of every 3 Jews in Europe.
• Jews were forced into Ghettos and then shipped to
Concentration Camps.
• After the Holocaust some Jews immigrated all over
the world.
Ghettos
• 3 Types
– Closed
– Open
– Destruction
• Ghettos were a central step in the Nazi
process of control, dehumanization and mass
murder of Jews.
• Final Step - in late 1941 murder of all
European Jews began.
Einsatzgruppen
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Mobile Killing Units
Squads made of German Security Police - service to kill perceived
racial and political enemies.
Viewed as first step in the “Final Solution”
Began by targeting all Jewish men, then Jews regardless of ag or sex.
– Were either marched or transported to site, then forced to dig their
own graves, lined up, then killed so bodies would fall directly into
the mass grave site.
1941 - late summer - mobile gas chambers appeared
• Four Battalion sized groups that traveled throughout German
occupied Europe.
• By 1943 - they had killed over 1 million Soviet
Jews.
Expansion of Concentration
Camps
• 1939 - 1942
– First camp est. in 1933
– 1938 S.S. exploited labor of prisoners for
economic benefit
– 1940 - est. more camps in the vicinity of forced
labor factories
• Brickworks and extraction of raw materials
– After beginning of war, camps became sites for
simple mass murders of proposed threats.
– German Authorities constructed gas chambers at
numerous camps.
Killing Centers
• December 1941 - Chelmno - first killing
center - killed 2,700,000 Jews
• 1942-43 - 1,526,500 Jews killed
– Gas chambers
• Auschwitz-Birkenau - largets killing
center/Concentration Camp
• Overall, about 6,000 Jews killed per day
• Considered TOP SECRET
• Hid the evidence by cremating the bodies and
relandscaping the land.
Additional Victims
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Gypsies
Communists
Trade Leaders
Socialists
200,000 Gypsies deported to Auschwitz
1933- Concentration Camp solely for Political Leaders - Dachau
1939-1945 - @least 1.5 million deported to Germany for Forced
Labor
Resistance
• Jewish ZOB
– Organized a forceful armed resistance
– Majority had been taken to killing centers before
an actualization of what was going on
– Jewish prisoners tried to rise against the guard,
but were overworked and starved, very weak.
• 5 women supplied explosives to blow up a
crematorium
• Communists, Socialists and trade union leaders both
violently and non-violently resisted Nazism
• July 1944 - failed attempt to kill Hitler
Rescue
• Many that did not agree with Hitler,
worked to support and protect Jews hiding them
• On Oct.1-2,1943 - non Jewish people
worked to rescue Jews from Denmark,
in small fishing boats.
• Underground network run by Catholics.
U.S. in WWII
• U.S. policy made it difficult for Jewish Refugees - why?
• 1942 - received info on Nazi plans to exterminate Jews,
but did not announce it.
• Failed to act decisively to rescue victims
• April 19, 1943, U.S. and Brit. Meet in Bermuda for solution
to wartime refugees
– 1944 - solution inacted
• Spring 1944 - Allies knew of operations in gassing facilities
• Wanted to bomb chambers
Death Marches
• Summer 1944 - Concentration Camps on the
outskirts began being evacuated to the
“interior” of the reich.
• Evacuations had 3 purposes
– Authorities did not want prisoners to fall into
enemy hands alive and tell their stories to allied
forces.
– SS felt they needed to “keep” prisoners to keep up
with production of armaments.
– Some believed they could keep prisoners as
hostages to negotiate
Liberation
Post 1945
Post 1945