THE HOLOCAUST

11 MILLION MURDERED

Why target Jews?

Anti-Semitism: hatred of Jews Jews had been persecuted for

centuries throughout Europe Used as scapegoats for problems

Nazi ideology Aryans are “master race” claimed Jews destroy culture, to

blame for everything, were inferior (not human)

Some Germans blamed Jews for losing WWI & the economic problems after the war Again, scapegoats

Nuremberg Laws

Nazis made targeting Jews gov’t policy 1935 Nuremberg Laws deprived

Jews of rights▪Deprived Jews of German citizenship ▪Marriages b/w Jews & non-Jews forbidden▪ Limits of type of work

Kristallnacht: “The Night of Broken Glass”

German diplomat is killed by Jewish youth, Nazis respond violently

Nazi storm troopers attack Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues, & murder 100 Jews

Major increase in Nazi persecution of Jews from here on

Refugees

Some Jews realized that violence toward them was going to get worse so they try to leave

After thousands immigrate, countries such as Britain, France, U.S., close their doors to further refugees

They have nowhere to escape

Ghettos Hitler ordered that Jews

in all countries he controlled be moved to designated areas Ghettos=segregated Jewish

areas Nazis sealed off ghettos

w/ barbed wire & stone walls Hoped they would starve to

death or die from disease Many Jews survived

Kept records, taught in secret, wrote music, plays, struggled to keep traditions

Final Solution

Hitler grew impatient waiting for Jews to die of starvation & disease

Genocide: systematic murder of an entire people

To protect Aryan racial purity Nazis had to eliminate other races & groups deemed inferior (“subhuman”) Gypsies, Poles, Russians, homosexuals,

disabled, mentally handicapped, Jehovah’s witness 5 MILLION MURDERED

And JEWS 6 MILLION MURDERED

Concentration Camps

SS units (killing squads) moved from town to town hunting Jews Men, women, children, babies, murdered

& dumped in mass graves Jews not killed by SS were rounded

up & taken to concentration camps (slave-labor prisons) Some worked to death Starvation Beaten or killed for not working fast

enough

A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS.

Extermination Camps

Nazis built extermination camps w/ gas chambers that could kill as many as 6000 in one day Prisoners paraded b4

doctors & separated “weak” from “strong”

Those labeled weak died that day in gas chambers

Bodies burned in ovens

Auschwitz-largest extermination camp

Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

Nazis sift through a huge pile of clothes left by victims of the massacre.

Two year old Mani Halef’s clothes are somewhere amongst these.

After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken

from victims at Buchenwald.

Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn.

A Total of 6,000,000 Jews

Percentage of Jews killed in each country

“Until September 14, 1939 my life was typical of a young Jewish boy in that part of the world in that period of time.

I lived in a Jewish community surrounded by gentiles. Aside from my immediate family, I had many relatives and knew all the town people, both Jews and gentiles. Almost two weeks after the outbreak of the war and shortly after my Bar Mitzvah, my world exploded.

In the course of the next five and a half years I lost my entire family and almost everyone I ever knew. Death, violence and brutality became a daily occurrence in my life while I was still a young teenager.”

Leonard Lerer, 1991

WHY?