The Holocaust

1933-1945

What was the Holocaust?

• Systematic persecution and slaughter of the European Jews by the Nazis between 1933 & 1945.

• Primary victims were the Jews – six million were killed during this time.

• Germany’s plan – called “The Final Solution” – was to kill all the Jews of Europe.

• Other targets – gypsies, the handicapped, Poles, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political protesters.

Who were the Nazis?

• Political party formed in 1919 mainly by unemployed German veterans of WWI.

• Adolf Hitler became head of the party in 1921 and led the party to become a powerful political force.

• In 1933, Hitler ended German democracy and established a dictatorship and restricted freedom of speech, press, and assembly.

Why kill innocent people?

• Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior”.

• Other races were seen to be a biological threat to “purity of the German (Aryan) Race” and must be “exterminated”.

• They blamed the Jews for the loss of WWI and the spread of communism through Europe.

Carrying out genocide

• Genocide - the systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.

• In the late 1930’s thousands of handicapped Germans were killed by lethal injection & poisonous gas.

• Jews were moved into ghettos and then “deported” to concentration camps where they died from forced labor, starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, or execution.

• Most executed in the camps died by gas and their bodies disposed of by cremation.

World reaction to the Holocaust

• The US & Great Britain had received reports of the persecution of the Jews in the 1930’s.

• These reports were confirmed in 1942, but neither country modified their refugee policies or made attempts to stop the genocide.

• Anti-Semitism (attitude of disliking Jews) was strong in Europe, which caused citizens of many German-occupied countries to work with the Nazis.

• Some countries, such as Denmark, worked to save most of its Jews.

The Beginning of World War II• WWII officially began in 1939 when Germany

invaded Poland.• In 1940, Germany conquered Denmark,

Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.

• In 1941, they invaded the Soviet Union and Italy, Romania, & Hungary joined with Germany. (Axis Powers)

Vocabulary

• Synagogue – Jewish house of worship• Cabbala – a mystical system of scriptural

interpretation that originated in Judaism• Talmud – ancient writings that form the

backbone of Orthodox Judaism• Deportees – people who were sent out of

their country• Gestapo – Nazi secret police

Vocabulary, continued

• Rabbi – Jewish prayer leader• Exterminate – put to death• Fascist – a political system headed by a

dictator in which the government controls businesses and labor and opposition is not permitted.

• Kapos – prisoners within concentration camps who were selected by the Nazis to oversee other prisoners

Vocabulary, continued

• Crematory – furnace for cremating or a building containing such a furnace

• Barracks – building or group of buildings in which the prisoners of the camps lived

• Oppressors – people who control or rule in a harsh or cruel way

• Truncheons – a police officer’s club• Kaddish – a Jewish prayer for the dead

Vocabulary, continued

• Concentration camp – a camp where persons (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained

• Selection – a process of choosing which Jewish prisoners would be put to death