Tuesday May 20, 2014

Agenda: Notes on the Holocausthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtY8ty1pFRQ

• Hitler wanted to create a superior race of “pure Germans,” called the Aryan RaceJews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, mentally and

physically disabled, homosexuals, communists, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, political opponents were all

fair game to be discriminated against.

• Anti-Semitism: hostility towards or discrimination against Jews

• Background of German Jews• .08% of population (525,000)• Most lived in large cities• Most were average, middle-class• Most considered themselves more

German than Jewish• (only 2% of bankers were Jewish!)• Fully integrated into Germany society• Supported WWI and the German

Empire• Hitler and other Germans blamed Jew

for loss of WWI, economic troubles, etc.

First Solution (1933 – 1938): Persecution

• Boycott of Jewish businesses began in 1933

• Hitler did not want anyone to do business with the Jewish!

SA pickets, wearing boycott signs, block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop. The signs read: "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" and "Germans, defend yourselves, buy only at German shops!"

• Anti-Jewish Laws– Fired from public service jobs– Not allowed to attend public schools– Where they could live and travel was

limited.– Jews could not attend theatres, visit resorts,

certain districts of German cities were completely off limits, and could not use public parks or swimming pools.

– Books written by Jewish authors were banned.

• 1935: Nuremberg Laws passed– Defined who was a Jew– Said Jews were not citizens

The fire department only made sure the fire did not spread to the building next to the synagogue

View of the interior of the Essenweinstrasse synagogue in Nuremberg following its destruction during Kristallnacht.

• 1935-1938: Subtle pressure to force Jews to leave Germany (By late 1930s, ¼ (150,000) of Germany’s Jews had left their homeland)

• Germans bought up Jewish businesses for ½ its worth

• Nazis refused to sell Jews real estate or let Jews stay at hotels

 

• 1938: persecution becomes more aggressive– Jewish property taken– Forced to take on Israel and

Sarah as middle names– Forced to wear the yellow star

Second Solution (1939-1941): Isolation

• Jews relocated to ghettos– food rations and living

conditions were very poor– Warsaw, Poland –

largest ghetto

•Many transferred to labor/concentration camps

• Einsatzgruppen: mobile killing squads used in Poland and Russia

Final Solution (1942): genocide

• Wannsee Conference January 20, 1942 – Nazi Officials come up with “final solution” to exterminate all Jews

6 major death camps created: Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Maidanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Belzec

Jews from the Lodz ghetto board deportation trains for the Chelmno death camp

Hundreds of Jews wait to board deportation trains at the railroad station in Würzburg. Their luggage and bed rolls are piled in the center of the platform.

“Work makes one free”

• Gas Chambers– Many victims did not know of their

upcoming death, referred to as baths/showers

– Carbon monoxide and Zyklon B were used as poison

•  

Majdanek:The rear side of a gas chamber. The furnace to the right was used to create carbon monoxide for gassing prisoners.

Human remains found in the Dachau concentration camp crematorium after liberation. Germany, April 1945.

(Above) Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn.

(Below) After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken from victims at Buchenwald.

•  1944-1945 camps began to be liberated by Allies

• Video and pictures taken to document the atrocities

“In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”

• ~Martin Niemoller