The Holocaust

Never forget.Never again.

1938-1945

What is “a holocaust”?

an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire); Example: "a nuclear holocaust.” wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The word origin is originally from the Greek language, meaning “total destruction by fire.”

What was “The Holocaust”?The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, government-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and six million other minorities by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. (United States Holocaust Museum)

The Holocaust was the worst modern-day genocide. Genocide means the murder of a specific racial or ethnic group; “ethnic cleansing.”

What began the Holocaust?Germany experienced a terrible economic depression after losing World War I (1914-1918)

Treaty of Versailles: 1919

In addition to the billions of dollars Germany had already spent on World War One, the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to make reparations (payments) to the allied countries and took away some of Germany’s land. This impoverished Germany even further.

The Rise of the Nazi Party

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) was a small political party that gained power and influence by promising to make Germany stronger and more powerful than ever through hard work, unswerving loyalty, and the creation of a “racially pure” citizenry. Adolf Hitler’s biography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) explained these ideas and its publication helped the party gain more influence. They gained control of Germany in 1933.

A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for someone’s problem. In this case, the Jews were blamed for Germany’s financial crisis. It seemed to the Nazi party that the Jews were thriving financially while the rest of Germany was having such hard times.

Anti-semitism (persecution of Jews) had raged throughout Europe since Medieval times, so this was nothing new. The Nazi party was able to gain power in Germany by fanning the flames of anti-semitism that had been smothered in recent years. They promised to rebuild Germany and make it stronger than ever….but first, they had to get rid of the people who were weakening the country…the Jews.

Jews were easy scapegoats.

Nuremberg Laws: The First Step *marry non-Jews

*vote or run for political office*own businesses*serve in the military*attend school with gentiles (non-Jews)*go to restaurants or other public places owned by non-Jews.*practice medicine or law for non-Jews.*drive cars and later, ride bicycles.And many others.

First written in 1935 in the German city of Nuremberg, these laws stripped Jews of their citizenship rights. Jews were no longer able to:

Nazi guards hold signs saying, “Germans! Protect yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!”

The Yellow Star

Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothing whenever they appeared outside of their homes. This identified them as Jews and subjected them to scorn and discrimination by the public.

The Ghetto: the Next Step

The word “ghetto” has been around since medieval times in Europe. It’s an enclosed area of a city where Jews were forced to live. Hundreds of ghettos were set up in Nazi-dominated countries, and Jews were forced to leave their homes and live in these unsanitary, overcrowded places. Conditions were terrible and people died by the hundreds daily. However, Jews set up schools for children and tried to survive.

People smuggling food into the Warsaw Ghetto.

Images from the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland

Overcrowded conditions,yet trying to celebrate Passover and maintain hope.

Nazi guards supervise.

Death by starvation and disease.

KristallnachtThe Night of Broken Glass

November 9–10, 1938

The Nazi party was dissatisfied with the Nuremberg laws; they wanted to send a stronger message to the Jews of Germany. On November 9, the German government staged a 30-hour riot that attacked Jewish businesses and synogogues.

In just a 30 hour time period:

267 synagogues were destroyed,7,500 Jewish businesses were looted, and at least 91 people were killed. They also vandalized Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes.

30,000 Jews were sent to Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen, where hundreds died within weeks of arrival.

Aftermath ofKristallnachtA destroyed synagogue in Berlin

People being arrested during Kristallnacht. You can see buildings burning in the background.

The Final SolutionAfter Kristallnacht, Hitler stepped up the violence and began his plan to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. He set up concentration camps, many in occupied Poland, to kill millions of Jews and other undesirables quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. Most people were deported by cattle cars, a torturous experience itself, where people were denied seats, food, water, light, restrooms, and were packed in like sardines. Some didn’t survive the ride.

Children being deported to Chelmno concentration camp.

People spilling out of cattle cars, weakened and terrified by the journey.

Arrest of small child at Warsaw Ghetto. Deportion to concentration camps.

“Work makes you free.” Slogan upon entering Auschwitz.Auschwitz was the largest and most brutal of the camps; approx. 1 million of the 6 million Jews were murdered here.

SelectionUpon entering the concentration camp, the people were separated into males and females. Then, both groups were “selected”—for slave labor, if healthy enough, or for immediate death if too sick, too old, or too young to work.

Mass Execution (before the use of gas chamber and crematoriums)

Often, the prisoners had to dig their own graves just moments before being killed.

A group of children selected for the gas chamber.

Medical ExperimentsDr. Josef Mengele and other medical doctors used concentration camp

prisoners for “medical” experimentation. These brutal experiments included injections into the eyes to change color, amputations, burning and freezing skin, pressure chambers, testing drugs, performing surgeries without anesthesia. Mengele was most interested in twin studies and tortured many twin children. These people were put to death afterwards so they would not reveal any information. Mengele was known as “The Angel of Death” because of the power he held over so many people’s lives.

Gas Chambers and CrematoriaThe Nazis were continually trying to find the least expensive and most efficient manner of killing people and disposing of the bodies. The shootings and mass graves were expensive, time consuming and messy so they invented the gas chambers. Prisoners were marched into hermetically-sealed chambers that looked like shower rooms. Instead of water, poison gas poured from the openings. After the people in the chamber died, their bodies were burned in the crematorium.

Modern day photos of gas chamber (left) and crematorium (right) at Auschwitz museum. Survivors often say that the smell of burning bodies was a daily reminder of death in the camps.

Inside the Barracks

Aftermath

Other Minorities in the Holocaust

Gypsies (Roma) peoples

HomosexualsPeople with physical

or mental disabilities

Jehovah’s WitnessesGerman-Gypsy family at a concentration camp.

Animated map of Europe before, during, and after Nazi domination.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_nm.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005143&MediaId=3372

Rwanda experienced Africa's worst genocide in modern timesFrom April to July 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority.

• Genocide spread throughout the country with staggering speed and brutality.

• Ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbors.

A Hutu man who did not support the genocide had been imprisoned in the concentration camp, starved and attacked with machetes. He managed to survive after he was freed and was placed in the care of the Red Cross, Rwanda, 1994.

The massacre at Nyarabuye took place in the grounds of a Catholic Church and school. Hundreds of Tutsis, including many children, were slaughtered at close range, Rwanda, 1994.

At the Red Cross clinic in Nyanza. Tutsis who had been freed from the death camp were treated for their wounds, Rwanda, 1994.

Survivors of the death camp new Nyanza were in extremely poor condition when they were liberated by Tutsi rebel forces, Rwanda, 1994.

By the late 1980s, arbitrary rule and economic collapse culminated in civil war when Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) militia overran much of the countryside, entering the capital in 1990.

Taylor’s boys

Around 250,000 people were killed in Liberia's civil war and many thousands more fled the fighting. The conflict left the country in economic ruin and overrun with weapons. The capital remains without mains electricity and running water. Corruption is rife and unemployment and illiteracy are endemic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13729504

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2011/August/Houses-of-Horror-North-Koreas-Secret-Prison-Camps/

North Korea Democide

democide: mass killing of people by a government

•1948 through 1987 the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was ruled by Kim Il-sung, a communist dictator•People were so tightly controlled in all their activities that very little information about executions, or concentration and forced labor camps filtered out of the country. •Perhaps from 710,000 to slightly over 3,500,000 people have been murdered, with a mid-estimate of almost 1,600,000.

THE MASS-STARVATIONS OF THE 1990s •widespread famine devastated North Korea •killed 2.5 million, and perhaps more than 3.7 million North Koreans (more than 10 percent of the population)•By the end of the 1990s, only 6 percent of the population who received food through the Public Distribution System were fed only 128 grams per person per day – about 1 cup of food.

October 1997, Hwanghae, North Korea: Young child suffering from malnutrition newly admitted to Tosan City Hospital, North Hwanghae Province. World Food Program provided relief food to institutions such as hospitals, orphanages and kindergartens. (c) WFP/Tom Haskell 1997

Why?