the holocaust
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The Holocaust
Friday, November 16th
Reading for this lesson
• From the William Lyon Mackenzie KingWilliam Lyon Mackenzie King book:
• Page 39: How Canada neglected to help Jewish refugees
• Page 41: Canada’s Japanese wartime internment camps
Nazism and the Jews
• Hitler and the Nazi Party blamed Germany’s troubles on its Jewish population
• Once they were in power, they began a campaign to punish all Jewish people in Germany
Jewish refugees
• Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe start fleeing their countries, looking to escape Nazi officials
• Canadian government did not want Jews coming here – less than 5000 arrived between 1933 and 1945
• Some Jewish refugees were forced to return to Germany
World War 2
• As Germany invades Poland and other parts of Europe, they send in death squads to target Jewish population
• Some were executed, others sent to ghettos
The entire state was involved
• One scholar has called Germany of this time a “genocidal nation”
• All aspects of government and society were mobilized to assist in persecution of Jewish population
• Nazis also target Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, some Christian groups
• Why were German people so willing to do this?
Some people helped
• Oskar Schindler.• Abdol Hossein Sardari• Raoul Wallenberg• Others would hide Jewish
neighbours in their homes
Concentration Camps
• After 1939, Germany sets up these camps for Jews and POWs, where they serve as slave labour
• Set up about 15000 camps in Europe• ‘Extermination through labour’ – people would be
worked to death – disease, injury, or if too weak, would be executed
• Everyone in the camps was tattooed with ID number
• Prisoners in Austria's Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp climbing the 186 steps of the Stairway of Death, carrying stone slabs. Around 44,000 inmates are believed to have died there
Death in the Ghettos
• Starvation and disease slowly starts killing off people in ghettos
• In some places, Jews organize uprisings against Nazis
• Most famous is the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943
The Final Solution
• As Nazis take over most of Europe, number of Jewish people under their control grows into several million
• Nazi leadership decides in January 1942 to implement a “Final Solution” to create an industrialized killing network
Extermination Camps
• In 1942 seven camps were built: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Jasenovac, Majdanek, Maly Trostinets, Solibor and Treblinka
Gas Chambers
• Most sent to these places would be immediately taken to gas chambers
Medical Experiments
• Nazi physicians like Joseph Mengele used these camps as places to carry out experiments on people
Liberation of camps
• As Allied forces march towards Germany, Nazis start to abandon and dismantle some camps
• Others are still operating when allied soldiers arrive
Belsen-Bergen
• Liberated on April 25, 1945 by British 11th Armoured Division
• Found 60000 people here, and 13000 unburied corpses
• Another 10000 would die from typhus or malnutrition over the next few weeks
Auschwitz
• January 27, 1945, Soviet forces reach Auschwitz, finding 7600 survivors abandoned there
• This was the largest camp, responsible for killing about 1.6 million people
Nuremburg Trials
• From 1945 to 1949, Allies (US, Britain, France and Soviet Union) set up a series of trials in Nuremberg, Germany
• Various captured German leaders and soldiers were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity
• Great influence on international law
Holocaust deniers
• Various people, mostly Nazi supporters have claimed that the Holocaust was a hoax, or that the numbers of killed were exaggerated, as part of a Jewish plot
• Currently, Islamic fundamentalists and Islamic leaders, like the President of Iran, have been claiming this. The Iranian President called the Holocaust “a myth”
Evidence for the Holocaust
• Written documents – hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, memoirs, confessions, etc.
• Eyewitness testimony – accounts from survivors, Nazi guards and commanders, local townspeople
• Photographs – from German and Allied footage, official and unofficial
• The camps themselves – many still remain• Population demographics,if six million Jews were
not killed, what happened to them all?
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