Chapter 16World War II1939-1945

Section Three

The Holocaust

The Holocaust Begins The Nazis proposed a new racial order for Europe. Germanic peoples, whom they called Aryans, were the

“master race”. All non-Aryan people, particularly Jews, were inferior. This eventually led to the Holocaust. The Holocaust- the systematic mass slaughter of Jews and

other groups judged inferior by the Nazis. Hitler tapped into a hatred for Jews that had deep roots in

European history. The Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which

deprived Jews of their rights to citizenship and forbade marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

“Night of Broken Glass” On November 9th, 1938, Nazi storm

troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across the Germany and murdered close to 100 Jews.

This night came to be known as “Kristallnacht”, or “Night of Broken Glass”.

This event marked a major step up in the Nazi policy of Jewish persecution.

A Flood of Refugees After Kristallnacht, many Jews left Germany and

fled to other countries. Hitler took over more territories where Jews lived

and the number of those fleeing increased. Emigration seemed to be the solution to “the

Jewish problem” as the Nazis called it. After a while the number of Jewish refugees was

so large, that many nations, including Britain, France, and the U.S. would not take any more.

Isolating the Jews Hitler ordered all Jews into ghettos. Ghetto- city neighborhoods where European Jews

were forced to live. The ghettos were sealed off with barbed wire and

stone walls. The Nazis hoped they would starve or die of disease.

The Jewish people hung on to their traditions, formed resistance movements, and taught their children in these ghettos.

“The Final Solution” Hitler grew impatient waiting for the Jews to die in the

ghettos. He implemented “The Final Solution”. This was a program of genocide, or the systematic killing of

an entire people. Hitler wanted to guarantee the purity of the Aryan race. He ordered the elimination of all other groups he deemed

inferior and subhuman. Gypsies, Poles, Russians, homosexuals, the insane, the

disabled, the incurably ill, and especially Jews.

The Killings Begin As Nazi troops swept across Europe, the killings began Units from Hitler’s SS, elite security force, moved from town

to town to hunt down Jews. Jews were taken to isolated spots, shot, and buried in

massive pits. Other Jews were rounded up and taken to concentration

camps or slave labor prisons. These camps were mainly located in Germany and Poland.

Prisoners worked seven days a week and were given little food. Conditions were deplorable.

The Final Stage In 1942, the Nazis built extermination camps equipped with

huge gas chambers that could kill 6,000 human beings a day. Prisoners were separated into two categories, weak or

strong. The weak, many women, young children, the elderly, and the

sick, were killed that day. They were taken to chambers that looked like shower rooms.

The doors were closed, the room filled with cyanide gas, and later the bodies were cremated in ovens..

The strong were forced to do hard labor. The largest of these extermination camps was Auschwitz,

located in southern Poland.

The Survivors Some six million European Jews died in these

death camps. Fewer than four million survived. Some survived with the help of non-Jewish

people. Many, at great risk to their own lives, hid Jews in their homes or helped them escape to neutral countries.

Those who survived the camps were changed forever.

Other Genocides Armenians Rwanda Darfur Former Yugoslavia