The HolocaustCh. 24, Sec. 3

Key Ideas• The Nazis believed Jews to be subhuman.• The Nazis increased persecution of Jews and set up death

camps in an attempt to kill all the Jews in Europe.

Nazi Persecution of Jews• 6 million Jews and millions of

other people killed during the Holocaust

• Shoah - Hebrew term for Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews in Europe

• Nazis also persecuted • disabled• Gypsies• homosexuals• Slavic peoples

• Nazis’ strongest hatred aimed at Jews

Nazi Persecution of Jews• September 1935 - Nuremberg Laws • Jews stripped of citizenship • No marriage between Jews and other Germans

• German Jews deprived of many rights other citizens of Germany had

• 1936 - at least half of Germany’s Jews were jobless

Nazi Persecution of Jews• November 9, 1938 – Kristallnacht• “night of broken glass” • Anti-Jewish violence erupted

throughout Germany and Austria• Ninety Jews died• hundreds badly injured• thousands of Jewish businesses

destroyed• over 180 synagogues wrecked

Nazi Persecution of Jews• 1933 - 1939 • 350,000 Jews escaped Nazi-controlled Germany• Many emigrated U.S.

• Millions of Jews remained trapped in Nazi-dominated Europe

• couldn’t get visas to U.S. or other countries

The Final Solution • January 20, 1942 - Wannsee Conference • Nazi leaders met to decide the “final solution” of Jews and other “undesirables”

• Plan to round up and take them to concentration camps–detention centers where healthy individuals worked as slave laborers

• elderly, sick, and children sent to extermination camps to be killed in gas chambers.

The Final Solution

The Final Solution• Extermination camps built in many concentration camps

• Thousands of people killed each day at camps

• In a few years, Jewish culture = virtually obliterated by Nazis in lands they conquered

Allied Armies liberate the camps

• 1944 Allies enter German held areas

• Begin to Liberate camps

• Disbelief !!!!• Soldiers• Citizens

The Final Solution• Study the photographs of the Final Solution on pages 721-723

of your textbook.• How do the photographs show the systematic destruction of

Jewish life?