Download The Holocaust

The Holocaust
Part II
From The Final Solution to
Liberation
The Final Solution
• As Hitler and the Nazis empire grew and
their war efforts increased, they were
faced with a dilemma over “The Jewish
Question.”
The Final Solution
• The Wannsee Conference
– In 1942 a group of Nazi
officials gathered to solve
“The Final Solution to the
Jewish Problem.”
– They decided to
systematically exterminate
Europe’s Jewish population.
• The Einsatzgruppen –
mobile killing squads.
Hitler found their methods
effective but inefficient for
large scale extermination.
Deportation
• Jews from the Polish Ghettos, Holland,
Germany, and other lands were herded
into cattle cars to be transported to
forced labor or extermination camps.
Jews were simply told that they were
being relocated to “The East.”
Concentration Camps
• Concentration Camps
• Death Camps – 4 Camps used only for
killing.
Concentration Camps
• The Gas Chambers – Zyklon B
Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Served as a slave labor and
death camp.
• 1.25 million alone killed at
Auschwitz. 9 out 10 were Jews.
Roma, Soviets, Political
Prisoners, and the Physically
and Mentally disabled were also
victims of Auschwitz.
Resistance
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
– 27 days of armed resistance using
home made bombs and stolen
pistols.
• Sobibor – an armed rebellion of
prisoners closed the death camp.
• Jewish Partisans – resistance
fighters
• Denmark – gentile population
saved their entire Jewish
population.
• Holland – righteous gentiles took
great risk and hid, housed, and
fed their Jewish neighbors for the
entire occupation.
Aftermath
• May 1945 – Nazi Germany collapsed.
• An estimated 6 million Jews were killed, 10
million people total at the hands of the Nazis.
• 24 senior Nazi officials
were found and arrested.
They were put on trial in
Nuremburg for Crimes
Against Humanity.
• In 1948, the state of Israel
was established.