The Holocaust1939-1945

Hitler’s Background Adolf’s father, Alois

was the illegitimate son Maria Schicklgruber, an Austrian maid, she had an affair with her employer, a Jew

Hitler later put a firing range on the cemetery his grandmother was buried in

The Nazi Ideology The Core Beliefs of the Nazis: Anti-capitalist: appealed to the workers Anti-big labor: appealed to small businesses Anti-big bank: hatred for Jewish bankers Anti-Marxist: Marxists were for equality in

class structure, Germans were not Anti-Semitic: Jews the cause of all problems

The 1933 Boycott of Jewish Stores Hitler declares a 3-day

boycott, doesn’t last because of the Depression, Hitler wanted to see if a business boycott was possible

Jews Begin to Feel Pressure Jewish beaurucrats and university professors

are fired Doctors and lawyers lose Aryan clients At first there is segregation in schools, then

Jewish children are not allowed in school because of “overcrowding in German schools”

Jews lose their citizenship

Hitler’s View of the Jews Jews are parasites and have

no culture of worth A Jew’s weapon is

materialism and individualism

Jews are evil because they undermine the sense of community

“The Wandering Jew”

Hitler’s Idea of Mongrelization Hitler believed that the

Jews were practicing Mongrelization (racial mixing, inter-marrying)

Hitler believes that Germany lost WWI because of Mongrelization

Anti-Jewish Legislation Aryanization: all Jewish businesses have to

sell out to the Aryans in 1938 Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935: no Jew is a

citizen, Jews cannot hold office or vote, they have no legal rights; an Aryan cannot: marry or have an affair with a Jew, cannot even have a Jewish maid

You might be a Jew… If 3 of 4 grandparents are Jewish… If you had a Jewish first or last name… If you go to temple… If your parents are Jews… If you are married to a Jew… If you are an illegitimate child of a Jew.

How to Identify a Jew? A Badge…

Almost everywhere under Nazi rule Jews were forced to purchase and wear a six-pointed star of David whenever they appeared in public. The yellow or blue star was worn on an armband or pinned on a shirt or coat. Concentration camp prisoners wore triangular badges that identified them by their arrest category. Many badges also identified the bearer's race or nationality. Yellow triangles were for Jews, red triangles for political prisoners, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, pink for homosexuals, green for criminals, black for Gypsies, and blue for emigrants. Letters printed on badges usually indicated nationality.

Kristallnacht, 1938 A night of violence

and vandalism aimed at Jewish synagogues and businesses, hundreds of temples and shops destroyed

How to Get Rid of the Jews? Reinhard Heydrich is named the

head of the Office for Jewish Immigration: responsible for deporting the remaining Jews from Germany

Many countries would not take the Jews and they were returned

Before the war 60% of German Jews had left Germany

How About Africa? Heydrich comes up with

the idea of sending the Jews to Africa

Possible places included: German East Africa (present-day Uganda) or Madagascar

Invasion!!! With the invasion

of Poland, mass numbers of Jews came under German control, with war there was no way to get rid of the Jews

Heinrich Himmler Himmler, the

commander of the SS, had this to say: “The extermination of the Jews would be an unwritten and never to be written page of our history.”

Intentionalism vs. Functionalism Historians that go along with the idea of

Intentionalism believe that it was Hitler’s intent to commit genocide from the beginning

Other historians believe in Functionalism, that Hitler did not plan the Holocaust and that it just happened

Let’s look at the facts and see what you think!!!

The Ghettos After the invasion of

Poland, Polish Jews were placed in ghettos where they were isolated from the rest of the population, most famous was the Warsaw Ghetto

The Invasion of Russia With the invasion of Russia, millions more

Jews came under Nazi control The SS came up with the Einsatzgruppen

(Special Action Units), were ordered to kill all Soviet political prisoners and Jews, within 6 months 1.4 million Soviet prisoners were killed, by 1942 over 1 million Jews had been killed

Einsatzgruppen Hitler deemed this process of executing

prisoners too time consuming and costly

What’s Next? Camps July 1941: Hitler asked Himmler and

Heydrich to find a “Final Solution” for the Jews

They looked at how they dealt with political prisoners…concentration camps

They also had experience with euthanasia in dealing with the mentally ill

Concentration Camps October 1941: The building of Concentration

Camps began at Auschwitz and Treblinka

The Functions of the Camps There were two functions of

the concentration camps: a death camp and a labor camp

There was a quick judgment of those getting off the trains, those that were strong enough to work were saved for work where they would eventually die, those no chosen would be immediately killed

Jews leaving the trains at Auschwitz

Life in the Camps In the beginning, inmates are given senseless

tasks to do such as moving rocks for no purpose whatsoever and then moving them back, this would break their spirit, allowing them to work on meaningful projects

Roll call would last all night, inmates would stand close together to hold up those too weak to stand

Life in the Camps Going to the restroom was a big event,

inmates worked in 12 hour shifts, inmates were forced to soil themselves because if they got up they were shot

If you were unable to share your food it was a sign you would not survive

To keep a sense of normalcy, some Jews kept the kosher laws and recognized Passover

What Happened to the Others? Guards would not let on as to what was

happening, they would tell the prisoners they were being showered or deloused

The Jews would be forced to undress and would be led into a room where the door would be locked

Once locked inside, the prisoners were gassed using Zyklon-B

What Else??? When the prisoners were dead, other

prisoners would rifle through the bodies looking for gold filling or valuables

One camp commander’s wife like tattoos, so any prisoner that had a tattoo she liked would not be gassed but killed by lethal injection and the tattoo would be harvested for things such as lampshades

How Were They Killed? Zyklon-B, or hydrogen

cyanide, was used to gas the prisoners, usually took 3 to 15 minutes for the prisoners to die, guards knew the prisoners were all dead when the screaming stopped

The Doctors and Experiments Most famous Nazi

doctor was Josef Mengele, the doctor at Auschwitz

Mengele studied twins and children, he experimented on them, played with them and then walked them to the gas chambers

Why did the Holocaust happen? The Holocaust happened because the Nazis

hated the Jews so much and they thought that they were better than the Jews

The Nazis believed that there was a great Jewish conspiracy to rule the world (which, interestingly, is still one of the most popular conspiracy theories in the world), which was running parallel to the Aryan quest of cleansing the world, starting with Germany.

Mad man or Hero- Adolph Hilter

Here was one man who had some weird ideas about a group of people, and the funny thing is that all other governments and countries did not/would not/could not help the systematic massacre of an entire civilization of people. Power makes people mad, and though his previous ideas may be at least arguable, his entire idea of destroying an entire civilization was not.

Other Experiments Nazi doctors tested the effects of high altitude

by placing prisoners in pressure chambers Submersed prisoners into freezing water to

see how long they could live Sterilized men and women using X-rays and

other methods Prisoners were injected with viruses to test

drugs

How did the Holocaust end?

The holocaust ended when the allied forces defeated Germany and then took over. The holocaust really ended in 1945 after the ww2 was about to end to it also ended when the Nazi’s lost power of Germany, but the official day of the end of the holocaust was at the end of ww2 exactly when all the troops surrendered also. the Nazi’s to surrender on May 8, 1945.

End cont…

The holocaust ended in certain places when the allies let go of the prisoners in the camps in 1944-1945. After Hitler’s death in 1945 the Germans decided to let go of the Jewish prisoners. The Allied armies, the Americans, British, French, and Canadians from the West, and the Soviets and Yugoslavs from the East. They all came into Germany to put a end to the concentration camps to set the people free. They forced the Nazi’s to surrender May 8, 1945

The End of the Holocaust When the war ended Jewish deaths were

estimated at 5 to 6 million The loses were the greatest in Poland, the

Baltic countries, and Greater Germany where 90% of Jews were exterminated

2 out of every 3 European Jews died during the Holocaust

The Nuremberg Trials Those responsible for

the Holocaust were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity

Most Nazi leaders that were tried were executed by hanging