The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecutions and murders by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

PERSECUTION: The systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. (Reported by World Magazine in November 2004)

Anti –SemitismAnti –SemitismAnti-Semitism-Hostility

toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism;

discrimination against Jews.

Aryan RaceAryan Race

This was the name of what Hitler believed was the perfect race. These were people with full German blood,

blonde hair and blue eyes.

Jews were a

SCAPEGOAT

*For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ-killers.

*After the First World War, hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed.

*At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example. *Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame (a scapegoat). They turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.

A scapegoat is a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.

Between 1939 and 1945

six million Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of others, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled and the mentally ill.

A Total of 6,000,000 Jews

Percentage of Jews killed in each country

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

Death camp: Nazi extermination centers where Jews and other victims were brought to be killed as part of Hitler's Final Solution.

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps were greatly expanded in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. They grew rapidly through the 1930s as political opponents and many other groups of people were incarcerated without trial or judicial process.

Death camps and Concentration camps

Concentration camp: A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions.

16 of the 44 children taken from a French children’s home.

They were sent to a concentration camp and later to Auschwitz.

ONLY 1 SURVIVED

A group of children at a

concentration camp in Poland.

WHAT IS A VICTIM?

A victim is somebody who is harmed or killed by another.

WHAT IS A SURVIVOR?

A Survivor is a person who continues to function or prosper in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks; a person or thing that survives

Part of a stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets found at Majdanek death camp.

Before poison gas was used , Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans. Carbon monoxide gas from the engine’s exhaust was fed into the sealed rear compartment. Victims were dead by the time they reached the burial site.

Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

Portrait of two-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child who was among the 33,771 persons shot by the SS during the mass executions at Babi Yar, September, 1941.

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.

Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September of 1941.

In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces. Why do you think they did this?

“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?

STUDENT INPUT!

***I NEED A VOLUNTEER TO GIVE ME A SUMMARY OF WHAT THIS PRESENTATION WAS ABOUT.

•WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM THIS PRESENTATION?•HOW DOES THIS INFORMATION MAKE YOU FEEL?•WHAT PART STUCK OUT TO YOU THE MOST?•HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT ADOLF HITLER NOW? WHAT KIND OF MAN WAS HE REALLY?

HOMEWORK: WRITE A 1 PARAGRAPH SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST AND ADOLF HITLER, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS ABOVE. WRITE THESE QUESTIONS DOWN SO YOU DON’T FORGET!...FINISH CINQUAIN POEM FROM CLASS.

WHAT IS A CINQUAIN POEM?

A Cinquain poem is a highly structured form of poetry. It requires a fluent and flexible writer. The format contains attention to word choice, word meaning, syllabication, and parts of speech, while at the same time expressing a meaningful message.

These poems are short unrhymed poems consisting of twenty-two syllables. They were distributed into 2, 4, 6, 8, 2 syllables in five lines. This type of poetry was related to Japanese literary styles.

TRUE CINQUAIN FORMAT:

Line 1: Decide on a one word title (noun - person, place or thing). (2 syllables)

Line 2: Choose two words that describe your title (adjective – describes something). (4 syllables)

Line 3: Choose three words that tell you something that the title can do (verb – action words). (6 syllables)

Line 4: Choose a four words phrase that describes a feeling about your title. (8 syllables)

Line 5: Think of one word that refers back to your title (synonym – a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language). (2 syllables)

*Syllable – A unit of sound composed of: a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel), and the consonants that cluster around its central peak. (clap to see how many syllables a word has).

EXAMPLES:

SnowmanChubby, cheerful

Waiting, grinning, winkingIcy weather keeps him smiling

Frosty

PennyRound, smooth

Tossing, flipping, shiningMake a special wish

Lucky