The Holocaust

An introduction

to one of the most heinous events

in world history

What was the Holocaust?• The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic

persecution and annihilation of European Jews by the Nazi Government between 1933 and 1945.

• In 1933, more than 9 million Jews lived throughout Europe. By the end of the war, more than two-thirds of them were dead.

Who were the Nazis?

• The term “Nazi” stands for the National Socialist German Workers Party, a right-wing political party that was strongly anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, racist, nationalist, and militaristic.

The Nazis

• The Nazi Party sought to bring Germany to supremacy and to establish what Hitler called “The Third Reich.”

• Party leaders were more than willing to use any means,

including mass murder, to achieve this end.

The Nazis: Hitler

• Adolf Hitler is perceived as the chief perpetrator of the Holocaust.

The Nazis: Hitler• Hitler became head of the

Nazis in 1921. He assumed power of Germany in 1933, quickly ending German democracy and severely restricting basic rights, such as freedom of speech, press and assembly.

• He established a brutal dictatorship through a reign of terror.

The Nazis: Hitler

• Hitler’s dictatorship created an atmosphere of fear, distrust, and suspicion in which people betrayed their neighbors and which helped the Nazis to obtain the cooperation of the civil service, the educational system, churches, the judiciary, industry, business, and other professions.

• Hitler also had the help of a number of assistants.

The Nazis: Himmler

• Heinrich Himmler established the Nazi Party’s intelligence service in 1931.

• He served as chief of police and leader of the SS, the Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s protective squad and the private army of the Nazi Party.

The Nazis: Eichmann

• Adolf Eichmann was the head of the Department of Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police.

He helped plan the Final Solution and was responsible for the deportation of 13 million Jews to extermination camps.

The Nazis: Goering

• Hermann Goering was the leader of the German air force, the Luftwaffe. He was responsible for the quick defeats of France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemborg, but he was also the mastermind of the Battle of Britain, which was not successful.

The Nazis: Goebbels

• Joseph Goebbels was an important ally of Hitler who helped Hitler plan the propaganda campaign so important to getting the cooperation of the German people.

The Nazis: Heydrich

• Reinhard Heydrich worked under the command of Heinrich Himmler, serving as the leader of the Gestapo.

• He was in charge of running the concentration camp system in Czechoslovakia.

The Nazis: Mengele

• Dr. Mengele was the best-known of the Nazi doctors.

• Known as “The Angel of Death,” Mengele made selections at Auschwitz.

• In addition, he conducted experiments on twins intended to improve the Aryan race.

Who were the victims?

• In addition to the Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped were major targets for Nazi anger. They were seen as a serious

biological threat to the purity of the Aryan race and therefore had to be exterminated.

• The greatest number were from Poland.

The Victims

• Millions more, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, suffered repression and death at the hands of the Nazis.

Why did the Germans target others?

• The Nazis believed that the Germans were “racially superior” to these enemies.

• In addition to their “racial inferiority,” the Jews were blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War I, for its economic problems, and for the spread of Communism in Europe.

Why the Gypsies and Handicapped?

• According to the Nazis, Gypsies and the handicapped shared the Jews’ racial inferiority.

• The best way to deal with such “inferior races”? Exterminate them.

• The plan for this extermination was called the Final Solution.

Why the others?

• Poles and other Slavic peoples were also considered inferior and were destined to serve as slave labor for their German masters.

• Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and Free Masons were imprisoned and often killed on political and behavioral grounds.

How many died in all?• More than 11 million people died at the

hands of the Nazis.

• Many died in concentration camps.- Some were gassed. - Others were shot. - Some died in horrible

experiments.

How did the Germans carry out their

policy of genocide?• In the late 1930s, the Nazis killed thousands

of handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas.

• After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units followed the German Armyand shot massive numbers of Jews and Gypsies in open fields and ravines.

Genocide

• Eventually, the Nazis created a more secluded and organized method of killing civilians.– Six extermination centers in Poland used murder

by gas and body disposal through cremation.– Over 6 million Jews and other racial minorities

from across Europe died in the concentration camps.

Genocide

– In addition, millions died in ghettos and concentration camps as a result of forced labor, starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, and execution.

Timeline of Genocide

• Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor (Prime Minister) on January 30, 1933.

• By March of 1933, he had established the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany.– The Dachau camp could accommodate 5000

prisoners and was originally intended for Communists and other enemies of the government.

Timeline

• The first Nazi-led anti-Jewish rioting occurred at about this same time.

• The Nuremberg laws, anti-Jewish legislation passed in September 1935, excluded Jews from German citizenship and made it illegal to marry anyone of Jewish blood.– A Jew was not defined as a person with particular

religious beliefs, but as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents.

Timeline

• In 1938, the German government began the “Aryanization” of the property of German Jews and expelled 17,000 Polish Jews from Germany.

Timeline• On November 9, 1938, anti-Jewish riots broke out all over

Germany. • Known as “Kristallnacht,” (The Night of Broken Glass) the riots

resulted in 30,000 arrested Jews, 191 destroyed synagogues, and 7500 looted shops.

Timeline

• To keep track of the Jews they hated, the German government conducted a census of all persons living in Germany in 1939.

– Collected information included religion and race as traced through parents and

grandparents.– This information was used to locate all Jews.

Timeline

• Germany acquired Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bohemia, and Moravia through “peaceful” annexations beginning

in 1938.

• However, on September 1, 1939, the German Army invaded Poland, beginning

World War II.

Timeline

• Within weeks of invading Poland, Heydrich ordered that ghettos be established.– All Jews in Poland were confined in marked-off

sections of towns, particularly in the cities of Warsaw and Lodz.

– The ghettos were enclosed by barbed-wire fences or walls guarded by the SS.

Timeline

• As part of the Final Solution, Jews and other undesirables were transported by train and truck to extermination camps.

Timeline

• Upon arrival at the camps, guards lined up all deportees.

• An SS doctor decided who was healthy and strong enough for slave labor.

• Young children, pregnant women, the elderly, the handicapped, and the sick were immediately gassed.

Timeline

• Those that survived the first selection were forced to work at hard labor.

• Working at such hard labor without adequate food killed most of the labor camp occupants.

How did the world respond?

• The first press reports of persecutions of Jews arrived in the U.S. and Great Britain in the 1930s.

• By 1942, the governments of the U.S. and Britain had confirmed reports of a “Final Solution.”

The World’s Response

• However, because of anti-Semitism and fear of a massive influx of refugees, neither modified their refugee policies.

• Their intention to defeat Germany militarily took precedence over rescue efforts, so no specific attempts to stop or slow the genocide were made until pressure finally forced the U.S. to undertake limited rescue efforts in 1944.

The World’s Response

• In Europe, rampant anti-Semitism incited citizens of many German-occupied countries to collaborate with the Nazis in their genocidal policies.

The World’s Response

• Some groups and individuals, however, helped hide those targeted by Nazis, at great personal risk.

• Only Denmark saved its Jews, conducting a nighttime rescue operation in 1943 in which Jews were ferried in fishing boats to safety in neutral Sweden.

Elie Wiesel

• The book Night was written by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

• Wiesel grew up in the close-knit Jewish community of Sighet in Transylvania, sometimes in Romania and other times in Hungary.

Elie Wiesel

• His book, Night, tells the story of his Holocaust experience.

Elie Wiesel

• Wiesel wrote many books, most focusing on his Holocaust experiences.

• Because of the recognition he earned through his writing, Wiesel was able to use his fame to plead for justice for oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, Biafra and Bangladesh.

Elie Wiesel

• In addition, he served as the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

• In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom and, in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace.