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The Holocaust:
an overview
A framework for examining the
Holocaust…
Exclusion:
You have no right to live among us as Jews.
1933-39

Expulsion:
You have no right to live among us.
1939-41

Extermination:
You have no right to live.
1941-45

The people involved…
Victims – about 6 million
 Perpetrators – about 200,000
 Bystanders – millions?

The beginnings of anti-Semitism

Early C15th
fresco
depicting the
crucifixion of
Christ

An engraving from
Regensburg, 1476,
alleging ritual murder of
Christian children by
Jews.

Le Rire magazine, 1898,
depicting the Jewish banker
Rothschild as master of the
world

“The Sin Against the Blood”,
1917. Sold 260,000 copies!


“Germans, think about it!” (1923)
Phillip Scheidermann (SD) and Matthias Erzberger (Catholic
Centre Party, supported by wealthy Jews and the revolution in
the background.
The Legal Framework for Exclusion



1 April 1933: Boycott
against Jewish shops.
7 April 1933: Law for the
Restoration of the
Professional Civil
Service.
20 August 1935: The
Nuremberg Laws.



14 November 1935:
Nuremberg Laws 1st
amendment.
10 November 1938:
Kristallnacht.
12 November 1938:
Regulation for the Elimination
of the Jews from the
Economic Life of Germany.

Exclusion and inclusion in the Volksgemeinschaft
Triumph of the Will
1934 Party Rally in Nuremberg
 Directed by Leni Riefenstahl
 Widespread acclaim throughout Europe.
 Propaganda or documentary?

The Holocaust



The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic
persecution and annihilation of 6 million European Jews
by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933
and 1945.
This genocide also included Roma and Sinti (Gypsy)
peoples.
Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, disabled adults and children, Poles, Soviet
prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered
oppression and death.
The “Master Race”
Nazis believed
 Jews
 Slavs
 Roma (Gypsies)
 the disabled
were a serious biological threat to the purity of the German
race. They referred to themselves as the master race or
Herrenvolk.The so-called inferior races were
untermenschen, or subhuman.

The “Master Race”

By using a combination of
propaganda, terror, legislation and
coercion, the Nazis were able to
persuade a majority of the German
population to support their policies.
The Jews


Between 1933 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations
discriminated against Jews and made daily life
increasingly difficult for them.
The Nazis wanted Jews to emigrate from Germany, but
there were tight restrictions on what they could take with
them and all countries around the world placed strict
quotas on the number of Jews they would accept.
The Ghettoes

Following the invasion of
Poland (1939), three
million Polish Jews were
forced into approximately
400 newly established
ghettos, where they were
segregated from the rest
of the population.
Starvation, overcrowding,
exposure to cold, and
contagious diseases
killed tens of thousands
of people.
The Ghettoes

The ghettos also provided a forced labour pool for the
Germans, and many forced laborers (who worked on
road gangs, in construction, or other hard labor related to
the German war effort) died from exhaustion or
maltreatment. (Below: Labourers from the Warsaw
Ghetto)
The German Conquest

In the months following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet
Union (1941), Jews, political leaders, Communists, and
many Gypsies were killed in mass executions. The
overwhelming majority of those killed were Jews.
The Einsatzgruppen

These murders were carried out at
improvised sites throughout Poland, the
Soviet Union and Baltic states by
members of mobile killing squads
(Einsatzgruppen SS) who followed in the
wake of the invading Germany army.
Concentration Camp System

World War II brought
major changes to the
concentration camp
system. Large
numbers of new
prisoners, deported
from all Germanoccupied countries,
now flooded the
camps.
The Ghettoes

Between 1942 and 1944, the Germans moved to eliminate the
ghettos in occupied Poland and elsewhere, deporting ghetto
residents to “extermination camps” -- killing centers equipped with
gassing facilities -- located in Poland.
The Extermination Camps

Chelmno was the first
camp in which mass
executions were carried
out by gas, piped into
mobile gas vans; 320,000
people were killed there
between December 1941
and March 1943 and
through June to July
1944.
The Extermination Camps

A killing center using gas vans and later
gas chambers operated at Belzec, where
more than 600,000 people were killed
between May 1942 and August 1943.
The Extermination Camps


Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also served as a concentration
camp and slave labor camp, became the killing center
where the largest numbers of European Jews and Gypsies
were killed.
More than 1.25 million people were killed at AuschwitzBirkenau, 9 out of 10 of them Jews.
Liberation


The extermination camps were liberated by Soviet troops
during 1944-45 as they inflicted defeat upon the
Germans.
The suffering did not end for many prisoners, who were
forced by their retreating guards to walk back to
Germany. These forced marches are known as the
Death Marches because over two-thirds of prisoners
died in the process.
Studying the
Holocaust

Reich Documentation Centre
in the unfinished Congress
Hall.

Wannsee House