The HolocaustThe Systematic Murder of the

European Jews and Enemies of the Nazi Regime

The Persecution of Jews in Pre-War germany

• The persecution and hatred of the Jews was one of the main policies of the Nazi party

• They began persecuting the Jews right after they assumed power

• During the first six years of Hitler's dictatorship, over 400 decrees and regulations restricted all aspects of the public and private lives of Jewish people

1933-1934• The first wave of legislation

focused on limiting the participation of Jews in public life

• The "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" excluded Jews from being part of the public service and performing jobs such as medicine, law and teaching

• Jewish doctors were banned from treating non-Jewish patients

• At this time, Jews were also banned from attending public schools and universities

The Nuremberg Laws

• In September 1935, the "Nuremberg Laws" were announced excluding German Jews from Reich citizenship

• They also prohibited Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or German-related blood"

• Since they no longer held citizenship, they were no longer able to vote or hold public office

• Jewish patients were no longer admitted to municipal hospitals

• Jews were also expelled from the German Army

1937-1938• "Aryanization" meant

the dismissal of Jewish workers and managers of a company and/or the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses by non-Jewish Germans who bought them at bargain prices fixed by the government

KristallNacht• On November 7, 1938 , Polish-

Jewish student Herschel Grynzpan, shot a German diplomat Ernst von Rath

• The Nazi government responded by attacking Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues on the night of November 9-10, 1938

• Almost 7,500 businesses were destroyed and 177 synagogues were burned to the ground

• In response the Nazi Government levied a 1,000,000,000 mark fine against the Jewish community

Consequences for the Jewish Community

• Jews were barred from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities

• In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter designated "Aryan" zones

• The government required Jews to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the rest of the population

• Jewish men and women bearing first names of "non-Jewish" origin had to add "Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their given names

• All Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage and all Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying letter "J"

Euthanasia Program• Under the Nazi Regime,

"euthanasia" was a murder program which targeted for systematic killing mentally and physically disabled patients living in institutions

• This was the first program of mass murder, predating the genocide of European Jewry by approximately two years

• They aimed to eliminate what Nazi scientists considered "life unworthy of life"

Euthanasia Program• In the spring and summer months of

1939, the Nazis began to organize a secret killing operation targeting disabled children

• Public health authorities began to encourage parents of children with disabilities to admit their young children to one of a number of specially designated pediatric clinics

• The clinics were in reality children's killing wards where specially recruited medical staff murdered their young charges by lethal overdoses of medication or by starvation

Euthanasia Program• Estimates suggest that at least

5,000 physically and mentally disabled German children died as a result of the child "euthanasia" program during the war years

• The program was eventually extended to include adults as well

• People were killed using special vans pumped full of carbon monoxide gas or shower rooms that pumped in carbon monoxide gas

• This technology was eventually used in Nazi death camps

Ghettos• The first ghetto was established

in Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski in October 1939

• Ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in which the Germans concentrated the Jewish population and forced them to live in miserable conditions

• The largest ghetto in Poland was the Warsaw ghetto, where more than 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles

Ghettos• The Germans established at least

1,000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone

• With the implementation of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos

• In August 1944, German SS and police completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz

Daily Life in the Ghettos• All Jews living in ghettos were

forced to wear identifying badges or armbands

• Jews in ghettos were forced to perform forced labor for the German Reich

• Daily life in the ghettos was administered by Nazi-appointed Jewish councils (Judenraete)

• A ghetto police force enforced the orders of the German authorities and the ordinances of the Jewish councils, including deportations to killing centers

Daily Life in the Ghettos• With the implementation

of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos

• In August 1944, German SS and police completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz

Resistance Efforts in the Ghettos

• Jews responded to the ghetto restrictions with a variety of resistance efforts

• Ghetto residents frequently engaged in so-called illegal activities, such as smuggling food, medicine, weapons or intelligence across the ghetto walls

• Some Jewish councils and some individual council members tolerated or encouraged the illicit trade because the goods were necessary to keep ghetto residents alive

• In some ghettos, members of Jewish resistance movements staged armed uprisings

• The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943

EinSatzgruppen (mobile Killing Squads)

• Einsatzgruppen were squads composed primarily of German SS and police personnel

• Their job was to murder those perceived to be racial or political enemies in the occupied Soviet Union

• They also murdered thousands of residents of institutions for the mentally and physically disabled

EinSatzgruppen (mobile Killing Squads)

• They followed the German army as it advanced deep into Soviet territory

• They used the local people to help carry out mass-murder operations

• At first the Einsatzgruppen shot primarily Jewish men

• By late summer 1941, they shot Jewish men, women, and children without regard for age or sex, and buried them in mass graves

EinSatzgruppen (mobile Killing Squads)

• Often with the help of local informants and interpreters, Jews in a given locality were identified and taken to collection points

• They were then marched or transported by truck to the execution site, where trenches had been prepared

• In some cases the victims had to dig their own graves

• After the victims had handed over their valuables and undressed, men, women, and children were shot, either standing before the open trench, or lying face down in the prepared pit

EinSatzgruppen (mobile Killing Squads)

• In the late summer of 1941, Heinrich Himmler, noting the psychological burden that mass shootings produced on his men, created the gas van, a mobile gas chamber

• By the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had killed over a million Soviet Jews and tens of thousands of Soviet political commissars, partisans, Roma, and institutionalized disabled persons

Concentration Camps• As Germany conquered much of

Europe in the years 1939–1941, the SS established a number of new concentration camps to incarcerate increased numbers of political prisoners, resistance groups, and groups deemed racially inferior

• After the beginning of the war, the concentration camps also became sites for the mass murder of small targeted groups deemed dangerous for political or racial reasons

Concentration Camps• Most prisoners in the camps

were severely malnourished and were eventually worked to death

• Diseases were rampant in the camps and many prisoners died from a lack of treatment

• The Nazis constructed gas chambers for use to kill people at several of the concentration camps as part of a policy that became known as The Final Solution

Extermination Camps• The Nazis established

killing centers for efficient mass murder

• Killing centers were almost exclusively "death factories"

• German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting

Extermination Camps• The SS considered the killing

centers top secret• To obliterate all traces of

gassing operations, special prisoner units were forced to remove corpses from the gas chambers and cremate them

• The grounds of some killing centers were landscaped or camouflaged to disguise the murder of millions.

Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka

• The first killing center was Chelmno, which opened in December 1941

• Mostly Jews, but also Roma (Gypsies), were gassed in mobile gas vans there

• In 1942, the Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers to murder the Jews of Poland

• The SS killed approximately 1,526,500 Jews between March 1942 and November 1943

Auschwitz-Birkenau• Almost all of the

deportees who arrived at the camps were sent immediately to death in the gas chambers

• The exception being a small group chosen for special work teams known as Sonderkommandos

Auschwitz-Birkenau• By spring 1943 Aschwitz-

Birkenau had four gas chambers using Zyklon B poison gas in operation

• At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day here

• Over a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war were killed there by November 1944

Dr. Josef Mengele – The Angel of Death

• Dr. Josef Mengele served as the chief physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau

• As part of his duties he performed “selections” of prisoners determining who would be retained for work and who die in the gas chambers

• Known as the “Angel of Death,” for his coldly cruel demeanor with this “selection duty”

Dr. Josef Mengele – The Angel of Death

• Mengele became interested in using twins for medical research in order to trace the genetic origins of various diseases

• Mengele performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments with Jewish and Roma twins, most of them children

The Victims• Although the Jews were

their primary targets, the Nazis also Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade union leaders, Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Slavic peoples, Clergy, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals