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?