The Persecution Begins

• April 1933-Hitler orders all non-Aryans removed from government jobs

• First move toward racial purity that would become the Holocaust-systematic murder of 11 million people across Europe-half of them Jews

Why the Jews?

• Germans looking for a scapegoat to blame their problems on

• Hitler blamed Jews for

– German defeat in WWI

– Economic problems

Many Germans ready to support him

Children were conditioned (brainwashed) into Nazi beliefs from an early age.   Here, a story book for small children stereotypes a Jew

as a degenerate pervert.   Anti-Semitism came easily and naturally to children who had been brought up looking at this kind of picture.

Why the Jews?

• Persecution of Jews increased as Nazi power expanded

• 1935-Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of civil rights and property if they tried to leave Germany

• Jews now had to wear a bright yellow Star of David on their clothing

Why the Jews?

• November 9, 1938- Kristallnacht-the night of broken glass- Nazi troops attacked Jewsih homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany

Why the Jews?

• Nazis blamed the Jews for the destruction

• 20,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps

• Jews had to pay 20billions marks-20%of their property

The Flight of Jewish Refugees

• Beginning in 1933-tens of thousands of Jews flee Germany

• Nazis wanted to send more out

• Encountered problems

• France had already taken 40,000-did not want any more

• British already taking in 500/week

• 60,000 fled to the U.S.-more would have come but the U.S. refused to relax its strict immigration laws

The Flight of Jewish Refugees

• U.S. was worried about anti-Semitism

• Also worried about competition for jobs during Depression

• After war began, Americans worried that they may be allowing enemy agents into the U.S.

The Final Solution

• Germany unable to eliminate their Jews through emigration

• Healthy Jews now sent to slave labor camps

• The rest sent to extermination camps

• Genocide-the deliberate killing of an entire people

The Condemned

• Nazis believed that the Aryan race must be preserved

• Condemned to death other races viewed as inferior or unworthy

• 1st attempted to eliminate political opponents

• Communists• Socialists• Liberals • Anyone who spoke

against the Nazi Govmt.

The Condemned

• Once Political opponents out of the way other groups besides Jews were targeted– Gypsies– Freemasons– Jehovah’s Witnesses– Homosexuals– Mentally retarded– The insane– Disabled– Incurably ill

The Condemned

• Beginning in 1939-Nazis govmt rounded up these people and sent them to “Special treatment centers”

• Given a “Mercy Death”• As Nazis move east, they

add Poles, Russians and Ukrainians to their list of subhumans who were in the way of the “master race”

The Condemned

• After invasion of Poland

• Thousands of Poles killed or shipped to Germany to perform slave labor

• Empty Polish towns filled with Germans seeking lebensraum

Concentration Camps

• Murder squads rounded up Jews

• Stripped them of their clothing

• Shot them in Cold blood

Concentration Camps

• Other Jews herded into ghettos-left to starve or die from disease

• Others dragged from homes and sent by train or truck to concentration camps

Concentration Camps

• Life in camps– Hunger– Humiliation– Work that ended only

with death

People crammed into wooden barracks that held up to 1,000 people each

Concentration Camps

• Shared crowded quarters

• Had very little food• Fleas and rats• Worked from dawn to

dusk seven days a week

• Those too weak to work were killed

Extermination

• Overwork, starvation, beatings, and bullets did not kill fast enough for Nazis

• 1941-Nazis build 6 death camps in Poland-each camp had several huge gas chambers-could kill 6,000/day

Extermination

• SS doctors would separate those that could work from everyone else

• Those who would die were told they were headed to a shower-even given soap

• Led to gas chamber and killed

Extermination

• Executions accompanied by cheerful music played by temporarily spared inmates

• Bodies at first buried in huge pits

• Decaying corpses gave off to bad of a smell

Extermination

• Mass graves also showed evidence of mass murder

• Nazis installed crematoriums to burn the dead

• Sometimes the bodies were just thrown into a pit and set on fire

Extermination

• Gassing not only method for extermination– Shot– Hanged– Injected with poison– Horrible medical

experiments

Medical Experiments

• Injected with deadly germs to study effects of disease

• Exist only on seawater

• Test methods of sterilization

The Survivors

• Six million Jews killed

• Some able to escape

• Many had help from people appalled by Nazi atrocities

• Risked death by hiding Jews in their homes or helping them escape to neutral nations