The Final Solution

Germany’s Enemy:The Jew

NEO-DARWINISMDenotes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution of species by natural selection + Gregor Mendel's

theory of genetics as basis for biological inheritance + mathematical population genetics

= modern evolutionary synthesis

• Intro’d the connection between two important discoveries; the units of evolution (genes) with the mechanism of evolution (selection)

• Goals proposed were to create healthier, more intelligent people, save society's resources, and lessen human suffering. Proposed means of achieving these goals most commonly include prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, selective breeding, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering

• Human rights violations, such as forced sterilization (of those perceived to have mental or social defects) and genocide

Nuremberg Laws• Were denaturalization laws in 1935

made by the government of Nazi Germany based on discrimination against the Jews

• Used the racial observance of grandparents to determine (using chart)

• Meeting held on August 20, 1935 and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor as well as the Reicht Citizenship Law

Definitions

• Holocaust – a program of mass murder

• Genocide – the annihilation of an entire race of people

“I ask nothing of the Jews except that they disappear.” - Hans Frank, Governor of Poland

Ghettos• Jews were originally

forced to live in ghettos, isolated impoverished areas.

• Sealed with barbed wire and stone walls.

• Wanted the Jews to starve or die of disease.

• Resistance Organizations:– Smuggled in food & other

needed items– Secret schools

• Problem: The Jews aren’t dying fast enough.

Deportation

• In 1939, Reinhard Heydrich ordered the speed up of the emigration of Jews.

• The St. Louis is turned away from the United States.

Kristallnacht- Night of the Broken Glass • October 28, 1938 Many Polish Jews were gathered and forced over

Polish borders by German government• Herschel Grynszpan, a Jew living in France, received news about the

terrible conditions of the deportation, he wrote Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary of the German Embassy, but he did not help.

• Grynszpan shot Rath, and gave an excuse for the German government to attack the Jewish population.

• The attack was meant to look spontaneous, but was planned by the Nazi regime and headed by Reinhard Heydrich

• 1574 synagogues were destroyed, many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores were also attacked

• 30,000 males were taken to concentration camps like Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen

• Including the directly related concentration camps there were around 2,000-2,500 deaths

• The Nazi government continued to try and play this program off by portraying it as a national uprising.

Kristallnacht:“Night of Broken Glass”

Heinrich HimmlerOctober 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945

• After high school joined the 11th Bavarian Regiment for service in WWI & later studied at the Technische Hoschule in Munich

•There became active in Freikorps, joined the Reichkriegsflagge, and in 1923 the Nazi Party

•The same year he was a Sergeant in the Beer Hall Putsch (which failed)

•Recommitted in 1926 and became Vice District Leader of Gauleiter of Upper-Bavaria, and also as Secretary to the Oberste SA-Fuhrer

•Then became Disrtict Leader of a small SA-sub unit known as the Schutzstaffel or SS.

•In 1927 he accepted the assignment of Deputy of the SS, making him vice commander

•January 1929 appointed head leader of the SS

Himmler and the Holocaust• Himmler became one of the main architects of the Holocaust

• He fanatically believed in the racist Nazi ideology of “purification”

• Content on finding Jews, Roma, priests, homosexuals, communists and any other religion, culture, or race deemed in opposition to the regime

• In doing this he felt the mass murder and genocide of millions of victims was justified

• Himmler was responsible for the killing of between 6 and 12 million innocents through his concentration camps and death squads

• He continued to gain power in the SS and Sicherheitsdienst (SD)

• During WWII he was the commander of the army group Upper Rhine against US and French armies

• In 1945 he was appointed Germany’s first Interior Minister and thought to be Hitler’s successor

• While the SS numbered 800,000 members, Himmler felt Germany’s loses in the war and made negotiations to surrender in the West

• His surrender was denied and was declared a major war criminal

• Near the Danish border he was captured on May 22 and set to be put to trial but committed suicide first

• Into 1933 the SS group rose to power with the Nazis going from 280 – 52,000 members

• Put efforts into separating SS from the SA (first using black uniforms)

• Under the order of Hitler, executed Röhm (leader of SA) and other SA officials on June 30, 1934 known as “The Night of the Long Knives” : The SS was now an independent organization of the Nazi party

• Given the task of organizing concentration camps, making Himmler one of the master minds of the Final Solution

• Along with concentration camps, he was in charge of execution camps set in Poland

• Opened the first of these camps near Dachau on March 22, 1933

Himmler and the SS

The Final Solution• “Now judgment has begun and

it will reach its conclusion only when the knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth!”

- Nazi Newspaper• Reinhard Heydrich was

ordered by Hermann Goering to prepare a “final solution” to the Jewish question at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942.

• There were 3 phases of the Nazi plan to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe.

Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed“The Blond Beast” and “HangmanHeydrich,” was 2nd in command of Gestapo & the S.S.

Phase 1: Shooting

• Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated

• They were taken to the woods and were shot one by one

• Their bodies were buried in mass graves

Phase 2: Gas Vans

• Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans.

• The vans were equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van.

700,000 Jews were killed in gas vans

Phase 3: Camps• Nazi leaders decided to

drastically speed up the Final Solution

• There were two different types of camps:– Concentration Camps– Extermination Camps

• 100 of these in Nazi-occupied Europe.

• Prisoners used for forced labor• Prisoners usually lasted less

than 1/2 year.• Communists, homosexuals,

criminals, social-democrats, gypsies, Poles, Brits, insane, disabled, incurably ill, POWs, artists.

• First camp was opened in 1933, right after Nazis came to power.

Awaiting Death

Concentration Camps

• Camps dated from the beginning of Nazi Rule in Germany 1933

• Est. to hold local prisoners and “undesirables” [ie: Jewish, Polish intelligentsia, communists, or Roma populations ]

• Conditions were brutal: physical torture, starvation, slave labor were essentials

• Death was a gift of sweet release• By 1939 six major camps = centrally

run in Poland• Small sub-camps set up near factories

to provide forced labor: synthetic rubber plants, airplane factories, coal mines, and rocket fuel factories

• 6 million is rounded figure of estimated death toll accepted by authorities

ON LOCATION:

Dachau [1933] Sachsenhausen [1936] Buchenwald [1937] Flossenbürg [1938] Mauthausen [1938] Ravensbrück [1939]

Entrance To Auschwitz:“Work Makes You Free”

DAILY LIFE• Transportation of prisoners carried out under

horrifying conditions using freight cars• Many died before they reached their

destination • When arrived @ camp, did manual labor and

prisoners often sent to the gas chambers or killed if they did not keep working fast enough

• Towards end of war, camps became sites for horrific medical experiments

• Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how exposure affected pilots, and experimental and lethal medicines all tried at various camps

• T-4 Euthanasia Program was established to "maintain the genetic purity" of the German population by systematically killing citizens who were physically deformed, disabled, handicapped, or suffering from mental illness

• Other popular causes of death: disease, overwork, mistreatment, starvation

Dr. Josef Mengele• SS doctor who arrived in

Auschwitz in May of 1943.• Performed medical

experiments on Jewish children.

• Medical experiments included:– sterilization of men and

women– endurance of pain to high and

low temperatures and pressure

– experiments on twins to increase number of multiple births to Aryan women

– injections of phenol to kill patients

– sewing children together to make Siamese twins

“Angel Of Death”

Medical Experiments

Slave Labor At Buchenwald

Mass Extermination

• Extermination camps were built with gas chambers for mass murder.

• The gas chambers could kill as many as 6,000 humans a day.

Orders To Take All Possessions From Jews

Teeth With Gold Pile Of Glasses

Clothes & Shoes

Wedding Rings

Zyklon-B

Auschwitz & Zyklon-B• Cyanide based gas chamber• originally developed by Fritzs Haber • First produced in WWI by TASCH for

delousing (pests, rats, insects etc)• Still in production in Czech Republic

under the tradename Uragan D2• The delousing chemicals were

originally used for delousing lice and controlling typhus

• In Jan-February 1940 Gypsy children were first experimented with Zyklon B chemicals

• Zyklon B was used in camps such as Auschwitze Birkenau and Majdanek, the biggest extermination camps in the Holocaust

Crematoriums

• Human ovens• Also were death pits• Cremation considered

blasphemy in Judaism because of the Holocaust

Mass Grave At Bergen-Belsen

Testimonials

• Elie Wiesel- Night • Art Speigelman-

Maus I and Maus II• Anne Frank- The

Diary of Anne Frank • Binjamin Wilkomirski

Fragments • Charlotte Delbo None

of Us Will Return

Elie Wiesel• “Never shall I forget that night, the 1st night in

the camp, which has turned my life into 1 long night, 7 times cursed and 7 times sealed … Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and murdered my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never …”

Holocaust Statistics

01,000,0002,000,0003,000,0004,000,0005,000,0006,000,0007,000,0008,000,0009,000,00010,000,000

BEFORE SURVIVORS

JEWISHPOPULATION

THE FINAL SOLUTION QUIZ

1. Name 2 out of the 6 central concentration camps and their location.

2. What were the 3 phases of the Nazi plan to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe?

3. What makes Neo-Darwinism so politically incorrect?

4. What is Zylkon-B and how was it used in camps?

5. What event did the Nazis use as an excuse to follow through with Kristallnacht, and how did they cover up the massacre?