Holocaust

Leaders of persecutions…

The Nazi (Adolf Hitler)

Targeted group… Jewish people

Others targeted… Gypsies, Gays, intellectuals, communists, and political opponents.

Date started and date ended…

January 30, 1933-May 8, 1945

Why it started… In Europe in the 1930’s there was a massive financial crisis. Hitler got people to believe it was all the Jews fault.

ON January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed chairman of Germany. (a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.)On March 24,1933, German parliament passes enabling act giving Hitler doctorial power. SS opens the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. Dachau concentration camp was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany, intended to hold political prisoners. The concentration camp was opened for putting the Jews in a holding area To not “cause any more problems.”

Jews were the targets of the Holocaust because

Hitler hated Jews and blamed them for all of the problems in the world. He

especially blamed them for

Germany's loss of World War I. Hitler told the

German people that they could have won the first war, if Germany had not

been "stabbed in the back" by the Jews and

their conspirators

Nazi party is declared the only legal party in Germany. Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,00 Jews. In 1939 Germans establish the ghetto in Poland.  The ghetto was a section of a city where all Jews from the surrounding areas were forced to reside. The Nazis then took all the rights from the Jews. They took businesses, property, and prohibited from all legal practices.

On January 30, 1939 Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.

"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"

Nazis then invade Poland (Jewish population 3.35million, the largest in Europe.) Great Britain and France declare war on Germany on September 3,1939. Nazi’s invade France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500). In November 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews is sealed off. On March 7, 1941 German Jews are ordered to do forced labor inside the concentration camps.

New ghettos were added in Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk, and Zhitomir. 3,800 Jews were killed during the pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno. More ghettos were establish at Bialystok and Lvov.

The first test use of Zyklon-B gas was at Auschwitz. It was the first use of the gas chamber.(An enclosure used for the execution of prisoners by means of a poisonous gas, An enclosed space where a poisonous gas is emitted to kill the person inside, often as a form of execution.)Then on September first, 1941 all Jews were ordered to wear David's yellow stars.

The Nazi started their use of poison gas in 1939, as a tool for killing mentally and physically disable patients in hospitals. They called this euthanasia, because they felt that these people were deemed to be unworthy of living, but it was essentially part of their systemic murder. people were killed using chemically-created carbon monoxide or lethal injections.

Gas ChamberThe gas seemed to be quicker and easier. Carbon monoxide was originally used in gas chambers. Later, the insecticide Zyklon B was developed to kill inmates. Once the inmates were in the chamber, the doors were screwed shut and pellets of Zyklong B were dropped into vents in the side of the walls, releasing toxic gas. SS doctor Joann Kremmler reported that victims would scream and fight for their lives. Victims were found half-squatting in the standing room only chambers, with blood coming out their ears and foam out of their mouths.

On December 7,1941 Japanese attacked the united states at pearl harbor. The next day U.S and great Britain declared war on japan. Meanwhile, In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Jews taken there are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them.

The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who had been deported from the Reich to Lodz. Then on December 11th, Hitler declares war on the United States. President Roosevelt then asks Congress for a declaration of war on Germany saying, "Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization." The U.S.A. then enters the war in Europe and will concentrate nearly 90 percent of its military resources to defeat Hitler.

In January there were mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow. From march 17-march 27 1942 there were mass deportations of Jews in Slovak and France to Auschwitz; then Lublin Jews to Belzec. SS reports that 97,000 people were “processed” in mobile gas vans. Being processed means to… there were mass killings of Jews from Mizocz Ghetto in the Ukraine. On December 28,1942 sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin.

In 1943 the number of Jews killed by SS einsatzgruppen passes one million. Nazis then uses special units of slave laborers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.Then the first resistance was on January 18, 1943 in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Jews. Then the Nazis ordered all gypsies into arrest and sent to extermination camps, Also known as death camps. On February 2nd the Germans surrendered to Russian troops at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies

 In March was The start of deportations of Jews from Greece to Auschwitz, lasting until August, totaling 49,900 people. The Nazis built new gas chambers in Auschwitz. On August 2, 1943 Two hundred Jews escape from Treblinka extermination camp during a revolt. Nazis then hunt them down one by one. Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland. So the Nazis then starts liquidating all the ghettos.

When all the Jewish people were concentrated into the Ghettos in Poland, the next thing the Nazis wanted was to get rid of them, but how, so they came up with the idea to move the people out of the Ghettos by force, put them on cattle trains to the Camps and burn the ghettos down so even if there were people hiding they would have been burned alive. This tragedy was called the liquidation of the ghettos. The Bialystok, the Vilna and Minsk, the Riga,etc.

On October 14, 1943  Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive. Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted.

In 1944 president Roosevelt tries to demolish the ways of Hitler and helps the Jews. President Roosevelt issues a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity.“ but more and more Jews a being arrested and sent to Auschwitz. On May 16, 1944 Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 people- half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.

The soviets launched an attack in eastern Belorussia in july 1944.shortly after the Warsaw polish uprising begins in august. That same month Paris was liberated. In January of 1945 death march of over one-hundred thousand prisoners from Auschwitz camp and Stutthof camp in Poland. August 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family are arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

In 1945  As Allied troops advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas. Russians liberate Budapest, freeing over 80,000 Jews.  Invasion of eastern Germany by RussLiberation of Warsaw by the Russians.ian troops.  Russian troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there. Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."

On April 23, 1945  Berlin is reached by Russian troops.U.S. army liberates Dachau.On April 30, 1945 Hilter commits suicide in his berlin bunker . On that same day Americans freed 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.Hermann Göring captured by members of U.S. Army. On May 23, 1945   SS-Reichsführer Himmler also commits suicide while in British custody.

• In prison camps, prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor. Torture and death within concentration camps were common and frequent.

• 11 million people were killed during the holocaust (1.1 million children) 6 million of those victims were Jewish. Other groups targeted by the Nazis were Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, disable people, and roma.

• The most intensive Holocaust killing took place in September 1941 at the Babi Yar Ravine just outside of Kiev, Ukraine, where more than 33,000 Jews were killed in just two days. The Nazis then pushed the wall of the ravine over, burying the dead and the living.

Pain and Suffering

• After the beginning of world war II, the Nazis begin to ordering all jews to live within certain, very specific, areas of big cities, called ghettos.

• Jews were forced out of their homes and moved into smaller apartments, often shared with other families.

• The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, with its highest population reaching 445.000 in march 1941.

• To get them to cooperate, the Nazis told the jews they were being transported to another place for labor.

• When the Nazis decided to kill the remaining Jews in the ghetto, they would “liquidate,” a ghetto by boarding the last Jews on the ghetto on trains.

The “Ghetto”

Concentration & extermination camps

• One of the first concentration camps was Dachau, which opened March 20, 1933

• From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners and people the Nazis labeled as “asocial.”

• Life within Nazis concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard work physical labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk. Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent.

• At a number of nazi concentration camps, nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will.

Concentration & extermination camps

• The Nazi’s built six extermination camps: Aushwitz, and Majdanek.Prisoners transported to these extermination camps were told to undress to take a shower. Rather than a shower, the prisoners were herded into gas chambers and killed.• Hitler was able to build a network of over 1,000 concentration camps in several ways. First, he established a legal basis for acts of brutal inhumanity by creating the Enabling Act, which allowed him to do whatever he wanted. Second, he used propaganda and media to dehumanize Jewish people and, finally, he used a system of brutality to terrorize the people into submission.

Map of the holocaust

If I were alive and age appropriate I would join a type of government to put a stop to Hitler's inhumane ways of treating Germany. Half of the world would be more at peace. The survivors of the holocaust are most likely traumatized with this occurrence. Lots of lives were lost and families were torn apart. The Germans lost much respect from countries and from forever the Jewish community. Germans ruined their relationship with other countries economical wise.