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III. The Holocaust.
A.
Nazi Persecution of the Jews.
Anti-semitic flyer
 Devastation and suffering resulted during WWII when Germany set up a
New Order in Europe and Japan set up a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere in Asia.
 New Order in Europe (The German conquest of continental Europe forced
millions of native peoples to labor for the Nazi war machine.
1.
The Holocaust – Mass slaughter of
European civilians: 6 million Jews, 5
million others.
When the Holocaust began
in 1933, England and France
didn’t accept as many German
Jews as they could have due
to worries about fueling
anti-Semitism and not wanting
any more immigrants.
 Hitler’s philosophy of Aryan superiority led to the Holocaust.
 Himmler and the SS shared Hitler’s racial superiority over the Jews.
2.
The Nuremberg Laws (Sept 1935) –
Took citizenship & civil rights
away from Jewish Germans; forced
to wear Jewish star on clothing.
 Nuremberg laws also banned marriage between Jews and other Germans.
 Similar to the U.S.’s Miscegenation Laws (outlawed inter-racial marriages in
the U.S.).
 Paragraph 175 – German law made gay sex illegal; enforcement increased.
3. Kristallnacht (Nov 7, 1938) – Gangs
of Nazis attacked Jewish homes,
businesses, & synagogues.
a) “Night of Broken Glass.”
 90 Jews dead; hundreds injured; thousands terrorized; 7,500 Jewish businesses
destroyed; over 800 synagogues wrecked.
 Marked increase in Jewish exodus of Germany; Between 1933-39, about 350k
escaped.
Einstein moved to California in
1932 in response to Hitler
becoming Chancellor and
discriminating against Jews.
The U.S. didn’t accept many German Jews because:
 widespread anti-Semitism,
 greater competition for jobs during the
Great Depression,
 fear of “enemy agents” from Germany.
B.
“The Final Solution” – Genocide of the
Jewish people by physical extermination.
Crematory ovens at Majdanek with piles of human
ashes still in front, as seen after liberation.
 Wannsee Conference (Jan 20, 1942) – Nazi leaders met in Berlin suburb to
plan “Final Solution.”
 The SS was given responsibility of the Final Solution.
 Used gas chambers, disguised as showers, to kill hundreds at a time; burned bodies.
 Collaborators – People who assisted the Nazis hunt down Jews, etc.
 Safe Areas – some aided the Jews.
1.
Concentration Camps – Detention
Centers.
Prisoners perform forced labor in
the brickworks at Sachsenhausen.
The prisoners who were assigned
to the brickworks were called the
"punishment commando."
Dachau
 At the Wannsee Conference, Nazis devised a planned to round up Jews and
take them to Concentration Camps in Eastern Europe.
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the
German Criminal Code beginning in 1871
that made homosexual acts between
males a crime. The Nazis broadened the
law in 1935 and increased prosecutions;
thousands died in concentration camps,
regardless of guilt or innocence. The law
was finally revoked in 1994.
 Spring, 1942, death camps in full
operation; Jews from
Ghettos first.
 Summer 1942, Jews from France,
Belgium, and Holland.
 1944, Allies winning war, Jews still
sent from Greece &
Hungary.
 Despite military needs, trains were
given priority to transport
Jews.
 Cruel and painful medical
“experiments” on gay men
and pregnant women.
Jew
Habitual
Criminal
Gypsy
Bible
Researcher
Homosexual
Political
Prisoner
Asocial
Emigrant
2.
Death Camps (Extermination Camps)
– used to execute prisoners in large
gas chambers.
Auschwitz
gas
chamber
 Some Death Camps were attached to Concentration Camps.
 Beginning in 1942, Jews from countries controlled by Germany (or friendly with)
Germany were sent to specially designed death camps.
 Jews and other targeted groups were rounded up, packed like cattle into freight
trains, and shipped to Poland and other Eastern European sites.
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Six extermination centers were built in Poland.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest (1.3 million killed).
30% of the arrivals worked at labor camp, many starved or worked to death.
The sick, elderly, and children sent directly to gas chamber.
Young Jewish males learned to look like an adult.
Mass grave at Bergen Belsen
concentration camp, 1945.
Auschwitz
survivor
 6 million Jews killed (3 mill in camps).
 90% of Jewish population in Germany,
Poland, & Baltic states killed.
 1.2 million Jewish children were killed.
 Responsible for the death of 2 out of 3 European Jews.
 5 million non-Jews killed (shot, starvation, experiments, or overwork).
 Roma (Gypsies) – 40% of Europe’s one million killed in death camps.
 Slavic peoples, clergy, intellectuals, civic leaders, judges, and lawyers
killed.
 Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians – 4 million died as slave laborers.
 Soviet prisoners of war – 3-4 million killed in captivity.
 Homosexuals – estimated 500,000 killed.
General (later U.S.
President) Dwight
Eisenhower inspecting
prisoners’ corpses at a
liberated concentration
camp, 1945.
The Nazis shot, beat,
starved, gassed, and
hung their victims.
They also worked them
to death, injected them
with poison, and
deliberately killed them
in terrible “medical”
experiments.
Row after row of corpses covered the ground
inside the Nordhausen concentration camp. First
Army men who captured the camp said that there
were 3,000 to 4,000 inmates of a half
dozen nationalities.
The camp at Dachau
C.
Nuremberg Trials – Allies prosecuted
Nazis for war crimes.
Hermann Göring,
Commander of the
Luftwaffe and several
departments of the SS
committed suicide the
night before his execution.
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials
for the prosecution of prominent members of
the political, military and economic leadership
of Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city
of Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1949.