WORLD WAR II1939 - 1945

THE HOLOCAUST

WHAT IS GENOCIDE?

“Genocide” is a Greek word that means “group-killing”

The intent of genocide is to deliberately destroy an

entire racial, ethnic, or religious group of people

The perpetrators inflict serious bodily harm,

prevent new births, or create conditions that will

result in death

There have been numerous genocides throughout history

THE CENTURY OF HATREDThere have been more genocides in the 20th

Century than in all other centuries combined

Genocides in the past were carried out to maintain empires, obtain wealth, and terrorize enemies

During the 20th Century, nations lose money carrying out genocides, but choose to do so out of hatred

REASONS TO COMMIT GENOCIDE

One group blaming another for social or economic problems

A group being seen as a threat during times of war

Extreme racism or patriotism

Anti-immigration policies or xenophobia (fear of foreigners)

Religious extremism

WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?“Holocaust” means “burnt offering” The Holocaust

refers to the systematic murder in

Europe of the Jewish people

and other groups deemed

“inferior” before and

during World War II

The extermination was carried out by the

German Nazis at the order of Adolf Hitler

THREE STEPS OF THE HOLOCAUST#1. IDENTIFICATION: marking all Jews in German society

#2. CONCENTRATION: taking away Jews’ freedom, removing Jews from society and placing them together

#3. EXTERMINATION: mass murder of the Jews in the death camps

Killing the Jews was the Nazis’ main

priority, more so than fighting the war

NAZI RACIAL THINKINGAccording to

German nationalists,

pure-blooded Germans were

part of a superior

master race called “Aryans”

Those not of pure German

blood were considered “inferiors”

Some races were considered to be

subhumansThe Jews were at the top of

the Nazis’ list as “subhumans”

ROOTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Anti-Semitism is hatred for Jewish people

Europe’s mainly Christian population were anti-Jewish for the Jews’ perceived role

in Jesus Christ’s death

During the days of the Roman Empire, the Romans forcibly removed the rebellious Jews from of their homeland (modern day Israel)

and spread them throughout the world

ROOTS OF ANTI-SEMITISMScattered all over Europe and North Africa, Jews were usually seen as unwelcome strangers

To survive, some Jews became skilled in finance and business

When times were tough economically, people would view the Jews with jealousy

Jealousy, dislike of foreigners, and the link to Christ’s death made for much anti-Semitism in Europe

ANTI-SEMITISM IN GERMANY

When Germany lost World War I, German soldiers (like Adolf Hitler)

could not accept defeat and looked for someone to blame

The already-disliked Jews made a perfect scapegoat for the

Germans, who said the war was lost because German Jews

“stabbed soldiers in the back” by not supporting the war effort

GERMANY’S VICIOUS ANTI-SEMITISM

In this German children’s book, a pious mother teaches

her little son,

“The Jew is the most poisonous mushroom in existence.” The children’s book “Der Giftpilz”

(The Poisonous Mushroom)

“DER PUDELMOPSDACKELPINSCHER”OR “THE MONGREL”

Hitler predicted genetic disaster if Jews were allowed to marry “pure-blooded” Aryans.

The title of this children’s book describes the genetically absurd poodle-pug-daschsund-pinscher mutt that adorns the cover.

This collection of 11 fable-like short stories about lazy, parasitic creatures such as hyenas, serpents, locusts, leeches, tapeworms and others link each creature to the “parasitic” Jews, who must be destroyed.

HITLER IN POWER

When Hitler became leader of Germany in 1933, he began to persecute German Jews, taking away their freedoms and rights

The Nuremberg Laws were passed, which limited the work

Jewish lawyers, doctors, and teachers could do in Europe

Marriage between Germans and Jews was forbidden

Those Germans identified as Jewish by law had to have a letter “J” stamped on

their IDs and had to wear the yellow Star of David on their jackets at all times

RACIAL PURITYGermans were

instructed to have nothing to do with

“inferior” races

Race charts like this educated Germans on who was “pure” and who was “der

untermensch” (inferior subhumans)

The Nazis described all Jews, Slavs, Turks, Mongols,

Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, prostitutes, beggars, the physically or

mentally disabled, or those with certain political or religious views (such as

Communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses) as

“Untermenschen” (biologically inferior

subhumans)

NAZI VIEWPOINT OF THEIR VICTIMS

This book contrasts carefully selected

pictures of depraved “inferiors” with

“beautiful Aryans”.

The book warned that inferiors

would overrun Europe, giving the Nazis justification

for genocide

NAZI EUTHANASIA PROGRAMHitler started a

program to euthanize (ending life to stop pain)

people with disabilities and

deformities

This Nazi policy’s purpose was to remove those

“unworthy of life”

The Nazis’ goal was to eliminate “useless eaters”: those who were a drain on

German resources

                                 

"60,000 marks is what this person with genetic defects costs the community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that's your money, too…"

KRISTALLNACHTTaking away Jews’ rights

was not enough: the

Nazis wanted the Jews removed

The Nazis organized violent attacks on Jewish businesses,

homes, and synagogues to make Jews want to

leave Germany

The most infamous incident was in November 1938: the “Night of the Broken Glass”

(Kristallnacht). This was a major step towards the genocide that would eventually happen

NEW TERRITORIES BRING NEW JEWISH VICTIMS

When World War II began, Germany

conquered countries that were populated by Jews (like Poland)

Hitler was determined to

also rid these new territories of Jews

JEWISH REFUGEESSome Jews in Germany and

these new territories tried

to leave and live elsewhere;

Hitler was in favor of this emigration

However, not ALL Jews could or would leave, so Hitler planned another way to deal with them

THE NAZIS’ NEW PLAN: ISOLATION

GERMAN SOLDIERS ROUND UP JEWS INTO THE WARSAW GHETTO

ISOLATION IN THE GHETTOSHitler ordered all Jews in his territories to be moved to certain cities, then herded

into segregated

areas

These segregated areas of the cities were overcrowded and filthy; they were called ghettos

STARVATION IN THE GHETTOS

The Nazis sealed off the ghettos with barbed wire and concrete walls

The idea was for the trapped Jews to die of

starvation and disease in

these ghettos

CHILDREN DYING OF STARVATION IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

SCENES FROM THE GHETTOS

ANOTHER NEW PLAN: MOBILE DEATH SQUADS

Hitler grew impatient waiting for the Jews to starve to

death; he wanted them to die faster

The SS (Hitler’s personal guards) sent special units

called “Einsatzgruppen” into German-occupied territory

The victims of Einsatzgruppen (death

squads) were taken into deserted areas, shot, and

buried in mass graves

These death squads rounded up and killed at

least one million Jews

HEINRICH HIMMLERCommander of

the SS and Executor of

the Holocaust

EINSATZGRUPPEN DEATH SQUADS

A UKRAINIAN JEW IN KIEV TRIES TO SHIELD HER DAUGHTER AS ONE OF THE SS

PREPARES TO SHOOT THEM TO DEATH

EINSATZGRUPPEN DEATH SQUADS

A UKRAINIAN JEW ABOUT

TO BE EXECUTED

HIS CORPSE WILL JOIN

OTHER MURDERED JEWS IN A

MASS GRAVE

EINSATZGRUPPEN DEATH SQUADS

EINSATZGRUPPEN DEATH SQUADS

One of the SS executioners takes aim at a wounded survivor during a massacre of Russian-Jewish women

EINSATZGRUPPEN DEATH SQUADS

THE SS EXPERIMENTED WITH ALTERNATIVES TO SHOOTING PRISONERS. ONE WAS “GAS VANS”, WHICH HAD A SEALED CABINS. JEWS WOULD BE PACKED INTO THE VANS AND KILLED BY CARBON

MONOXIDE FUMES PUMPED INTO THE CABINS.

THE WANNSEE CONFERENCEHitler grew impatient

again, thinking that the death squads were too

inefficient at eliminating the Jews

In 1941, a meeting of top Nazis was held in the town of Wannsee, led by SS chief Heinrich

Himmler, to decide what to do

At the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis

decided on a “Final Solution” to their “Jewish problem”

A high-ranking Nazi, Reinhart Heydrich, proposed that Jews

should be worked to death, a method

known as “destruction through work”

Those Jews not strong enough for work would

be immediately executed in death camps

After the Conference, several

concentration camps (which already had

enslaved prisoners) were converted

into death camps

Death camps were different in that the main

purpose was to exterminate people and dispose of their remains

Prisoners dying certainly occurred in the concentration camps, but the death camps were

DESIGNED to kill on an industrialized scale

WHERE WERE THE DEATH CAMPS LOCATED?

Why do you think the camps were primarily built here?

The work of the Einsatzgruppen

WHAT TACTICS DID THE NAZIS USE TO GET THE JEWS TO LEAVE THE GHETTOS AND GO TO DEATH CAMPS?

TACTICS

STARVATION

The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto

were only fed 1000 calories a day

A human being needs 2400 calories a day to maintain their weight

TERROR

The SS publicly shot people for smuggling food or for any act of resistance

DECEPTION

The Jews were told that they were going

to “resettlement areas” in the East

In some Ghettos, the Jews had to purchase their

own train tickets

They were told to bring the tools of their

trade and pots and pans

Hungry people are easier to control

New arrivals at the death camps were given postcards to

send to their friends

SS TACTICS: DEHUMANIZATION The SS guards who murdered the Jews were indoctrinated

with Anti-Semitic propaganda; they were trained to think of Jews as less than human

The Jews were transported in cattle cars in terrible conditions (no food, no water, no room to lay down, standing in their own waste; especially sadistic SS men would spray the walls and floor of the cars with chemicals to irritate and burn skin)

Naked, dirty, and half starved people were made to look like animals, which helped to reinforce the Nazi propaganda

The SS used to train the death camp guards by encouraging them to set fire to a pit full of live victims: usually children

ENTRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ

The worst of these death camps was Auschwitz

The front gate of Auschwitz, as well as other death camps, had the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” above it. This

translates to “Work Sets You Free”. In reality, any prisoner entering these gates would not be set free; they

would be murdered outright or worked to death

AUSCHWITZ ORCHESTRA

When trains arrived at the camps, the prisoners would be split into two lines

Guards and camp doctors selected which line each prisoner went to…

LEFTImmediate death in a gas chamber

ORRIGHT

Life as a slave being slowly worked and starved to death

“LIFE” IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP

Daily life in a concentration camp was miserable at best

The Jews knew they were there to die a horrible death

There was the daily drudgery of twelve hours of hard labor, disgusting food, and sleepless nights made hideous by screams and the sounds of crematoriums

“LIFE” IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP Rats, lice, and other vermin

infested the camps and afflicted the prisoners

The SS and prison guards were scum of the earth: murderers, rapists, and sadists, had run of the camps

These guards would take sick pleasure in torturing, beating, humiliating, and killing their victims (no adult, child, or baby was safe)

The SS men and the guards (both men and women) that

ran the death camps spared no one, not even the youngest children

THE GAS CHAMBERSAN EXTERIOR VIEW

The ovens conveniently located near the gas chambers

THE GAS CHAMBERSAN INTERIOR VIEW

• The Nazis would force large groups of prisoners into small cement rooms and drop canisters of lethal Zyklon B in its crystal form through small holes in the roof

• These gas chambers were sometimes disguised as showers or bathing houses

The SS would try to pack up to 2000 people into

this gas chamber

When captives died, their bodies would be processed. If they had gold or silver teeth, they would be smashed out of their mouths. The gold and silver would then be melted down and reused. Some Nazis often used their hair to stuff pillows and their skin to make various products, including jackets, gloves, and lampshades. The remains were then thrown into crematoriums. Ashes from the crematoriums were used as fertilizer for farms and gardens

THE OVENS AT DACHAU

Once the bodies had everything of value taken from them, the remains were reduced

to ashes in the crematoriums (ovens)

THE OVENS AT AUSCHWITZ

PROCESSING THE BODIES

Specially selected Jews known as the

“Sonderkommando” were used to

remove the gold teeth and hair of people who died

The Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed the dead bodies into the crematoriums

SHOES WAITING TO BE PROCESSED

BY THE “SONDERKOMMANDO”

This photo was taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz Museum. This represents one day's collection at

the peak of the gassings, about 25,000 pairs.

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

THE ANGEL OF DEATH

Cruel (and often deadly) medical experiments were done on prisoners of all ages in the concentration camps

Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the “Angel of Death”, was the most infamous Nazi doctor, working at Auschwitz

Mengele often made selections of new

prisoners, deciding who would be used as slaves and who would

die immediately

Mengele also selected prisoners that would become his “human

mice”, unwilling subjects for medical

experiments

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTSDr. Mengele was most interested with genetics and

twins; he was determined to find ways to create more twin births, so the Nazis could populate the world with more “pure-blooded” Aryans at a faster rate

Mengele was also interested in finding ways to sterilize “inferior” races, preventing births

He also performed experiments to look for “battlefield cures”, new methods to help heal wounded soldiers (Of course, to research these “battlefield cures”, the wounds would have to be applied to the helpless prisoners first)

It is believed that Dr. Josef Mengele was personally responsible for the murders of 400,000 prisoners, either by his own hand during his “experiments” or by ordering them into the gas chambers

NAZI DOCTORS CALCULATE HOW LONG IT TAKES PEOPLE TO FREEZE TO DEATH BY IMMERSING THEM IN ICY WATER

HORRIFYING ATROCITIESThe full list of atrocities committed by Josef Mengele and several other Nazi

doctors is difficult to fathomSome of the horrors they inflicted on their victims include: Surgery and amputations without anesthesia Tests of endurance (seeing how long it took prisoners to die through

freezing or boiling victims, sleep deprivation, high altitude exposure) Testing drugs on wounds; cuts would be deliberately infected with

gangrene or irritated with ground glass Testing of poisons to see which were most effective Sterilization through injecting drugs into uteruses and exposure of

reproductive organs to radiation Infecting prisoners with tuberculosis and searching for cures; those who did

not die from the disease were killed so they could be dissected Bone, muscle, and joint transplantation; doctors trying to find out if body

parts could be transplanted would cut off parts of prisoners’ bodies and try to attach them to other prisoners’ bodies. They would also cut out bodily organs and try to re-grow them outside the body.

Injecting chemicals into eyes to change their color Taking two healthy twins and attempting to create conjoined twins out of

them by fusing their skin, bones, and organs together

THE WORST DEATH CAMPS

Auschwitz 1,400,000

Belzec 600,000Chelmno

320,000Jasenovac

600,000 Majdanek

360,000 Maly Trostinets

65,000 Sobibór

250,000 Treblinka

870,000

CAMP DEATHS

LIBERATION

When Germany was invaded and fell to the Allies (British, American, and Russian troops), the

prisoners at the death camps were liberated. The Russians uncovered the worst of them in Poland.

LIBERATION

THE INMATES OF DACHAU ARE FREED BY THE ALLIES

MANY OF THOSE LIBERATED WOULD NOT SURVIVE

For many prisoners, help arrived too late Even after liberation, prisoners were

dying daily by the hundreds

THE ALLIES ARE UNPREPARED FOR WHAT THEY SEE

Battle-hardened soldiers were shocked at what they witnessed. General Dwight Eisenhower and General George Patton visited a liberated camp in April 1945. Patton, as tough a military leader as there has ever been, became physically sick from the sights and smells of death at the camp.

ABSOLUTE HORROR

Eisenhower addressed officers around him, “I want every American unit not actually in the front lines to see this place. We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting AGAINST.”

Eisenhower arranged for soldiers, politicians, reporters, and photographers to visit the liberated camps. He wanted many people to have first-hand evidence of what happened, in case people tried to claim that the stories of genocide were “propaganda”.

VENGEANCE ON THE OPPRESSORS

☼The depth of the Nazi barbarism outraged the Allied soldiers

☼Furious at what they found at Dachau, young GIs executed many of the guards and SS men immediately

☼Allied military commanders mostly ignored instances of revenge beatings and killings of camp guards by former inmates still strong enough to do so

FREED INMATES BEAT AND TAUNT A CAMP GUARD

VENGEANCE ON THE OPPRESSORS

A FREED INMATE POINTS OUT A PARTICULARLY SADISTIC GUARD TO ALLIED TROOPS FEMALE GUARDS AT

BERGEN-BELSEN ARE HUNG OUTSIDE THE CAMP

VENGEANCE ON THE OPPRESSORS

THE BODIES OF SS MEN AFTER A RAMPAGE BY FREED PRISONERS

GERMAN CITIZENS FACE THE TRUTH

Despite their protests of innocence and ignorance, local German civilians

were forced to view the camps that were near them; in some cases, Allied soldiers forced the Germans

to bury the dead bodies

VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST:

THE STATISTICS

COUNTRY INITIAL POPULATION

ESTIMATED % KILLED

ESTIMATED NUMBER KILLED

NUMBER OF SURVIVORS

POLAND 3,300,000 91% 3,000,000 300,000

USSR 3,020,000 36% 1,100,000 1,920,000

HUNGARY 800,000 74% 596,000 204,000

GERMANY 566,000 36% 200,000 366,000

FRANCE 350,000 22% 77,320 272,680

ROMANIA 342,000 84% 287,000 55,000

AUSTRIA 185,000 35% 65,000 120,000

LITHUANIA 168,000 85% 143,000 25,000

NETHERLANDS 140,000 71% 100,000 40,000

BOHEMIA-MORAVIA(CZECH TERRITORY) 118,310 60% 71,150 47,160

LATVIA 95,000 84% 80,000 15,000

SLOVAKIA 88,950 80% 71,000 17,950

YUGOSLAVIA 78,000 81% 63,300 14,700

GREECE 77,380 87% 67,000 10,380

BELGIUM 65,700 45% 28,900 36,800

ITALY 44,500 17% 7,680 36,820

BULGARIA 50,000 0% 50,000

DENMARK 7,800 .8% 60 7,740

ESTONIA 4,500 44% 2,000 2,500

LUXEMBOURG 3,500 55% 1,950 1,550

FINLAND 2,000 .03% 7 1,993

NORWAY 1,700 45% 762 938

TOTAL 9,508,340 63% 5,962,129 3,546,211

These numbers represent the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II

The estimated number of murdered Jews in all of these European nations

is NEARLY SIX MILLION

Not only Jews were exterminated by the Nazis

In addition to the SIX MILLION murdered Jews, the Nazis also killed FIVE MILLION other “undesirables”

They included: Poles Russians Gypsies Homosexuals Disabled Jehovah’s Witnesses Germans who protested against Nazism

ALTOGETHER, THE NAZIS MURDERED ABOUT

ELEVEN MILLION PEOPLE

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Elie Wiesel

CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE

Created by Christopher J. Jaskowiak

Special thanks to Rachel Mychajluk, David Muldoon, Lance Cayea, Eric Zastrow, Susan Pojer, and Professor Scott Masters for some of the images and information

Some of the books used in creating this presentation: World War II Chronicles, Delivered From Evil, The Nazi Doctors, The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich