1. Define: Anti-Semitism, Genocide

2. List and explain the steps that the Nazis took to the process of extermination.

3. Analyze and discuss the images that were taken during the Holocaust.

4. Describe how Germany deceived, controlled, and carried out a plan to execute 6 million Jews.

5. Explain why there is an effort to deny the existence of the Holocaust.

Historic:Historic:• Religious: Jews blamed for death of Jesus; stereotype of the

“wandering Jew”• Economic: Jews accused of economic exploitation• Social: Jews viewed as outsiders, suffering expulsions,

discriminatory laws, confinement to ghettos

Modern:Modern:• Political: Jews accused of spreading Marxism• Racial: Nazi racial ideology promoted the idea that Jews are a

separate race “polluting” the German Volk• Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Alleges a worldwide Jewish

conspiracy

“One does not have dealings with pests and parasites; one

does not rear and cherish them; one destroys them as speedily and thoroughly as

possible.”

• A German Nationalist and Anti-Semitic during the 1800’s.

A German children’s book titled: The Poisonous Mushroom

Translation: The Jewish worm makes his move

The people of Germany were ordered to destroy books and other forms of media which did not correspond with Nazi ideology. Many of the

destroyed items were produced by Jews.

Identification

Concentration

Murder

Genocide

• Legalized discrimination

•I.D. cards and “J’s” on passports

• Curfews

• Yellow stars

• Ghettos

• Nazi belief in a system of racial superiority.

• Hitler believed that the Germans descended from the “master race” of Aryans.

• European descent

This Aryan woman and Jewish man were accused of breaking the Nuremburg Laws by cohabitating. They were forced to wear placards in

public announcing their alleged “crime.”

Two Jewish students being humiliated by their classmates. The chalkboard reads: “The Jew is our greatest enemy. Beware of the Jew!”

Jews lined up for concentration in Warsaw, Poland.

Signs in German and Czechoslovakian stated, "No entry for Jews".

The April 28 edition of the Voice of Warsaw reported: "The SS thugs set ablaze to entire blocks of flats in order to force the population to come out of hiding...the water, gas, and electric supplies

were cut off....”

A Mother and son forcibly removed from Warsaw to the Ghettos.

Jews being forcibly deported from Amsterdam.

Main gate to the Warsaw Ghetto

German soldiers cutting the beard of an elderly Jew in Poland.

The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were

only fed a 800 calories a day .

A Human being needs 2400 calories a

day to maintain their weightTerror

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, along

with pots and pans.

Hungry people are easier to control

New arrivals at the Death camps were given

postcards to send to their friends.

TacticsTactics

Starvation

When the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto learned the truth about the "resettlement" action, some of them rebelled. The Nazis responded by

shelling and bombing the ghetto, till all the occupants died or surrendered.

Nazi killing of minority groups on a small scale.

“If I am ever really in power the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most

important job. . . . The Jews will be hanged one after

another and they will stay hanging until they stink.”

Adolf Hitler (1922)

In the countries they defeated, the Germans deported the Jewish population to camps.

Work camps, concentration camps, death camps. Each had a specific purpose.

Torture and humiliation, degradation before murder. Starvation, beatings, rapes, public stripping, public hangings, firing squads

Worked to death in labor camps, sometimes for no productive purpose except torture and destruction.

People had to dig their own graves. Massive graves, bodies thrown on top of other bodies.

In Germany, they eliminated “non-productive” members of society: mentally ill, physically handicapped, even elderly and sick.

Called “Life not worthy of life…”

A young mother with her two children, sitting among a large group of Jews who have been assembled for mass execution by the Germans.

German police and Ukrainian collaborators in civilian clothes look on as Jewish women are forced to undress before their execution.

Hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children await their execution.

Children just prior to their execution by the Einsatzgruppen. (Special Operations Units).

Young Jewish men forced to dig a massive grave, which they were also buried in.

For refusing to dig, a German unleashes his dogs on a Jewish man.

A Jewish family is made to undress, in the cold, before their executions. In the background, another Jew covers the already executed with dirt.

Execution squad firing at Jews standing in the prepared burial trench.

Jewish men forced to kneel over a trench partially filled with the already executed.

A Jewish parent makes an attempt to shelter a child from the bullet of an executioner.

The last view of millions.

Shooting was too inefficient as the bullets were needed for the war

effort.

Jews were to be rounded up and put into transit camps

called Ghettoes

The Jews living in these Ghettos were to

be used as a cheap source of labour.

Conditions in the Ghettos were designed to be so bad that many

die while the rest would be willing to leave these areas in the

hope of better conditions

On arrival the Jews would go through a

process called ‘selection.’

The remaining Jews were to be shipped

to ‘resettlement areas’ in the East.

Women, children, the old & the sick were to

be sent for ‘special treatment.’

The young and fit would go through a process called

‘destruction through work.’

The Final The Final SolutionSolution

TreblinkaBetween 1942 & 1943, 850,000 people were killed here. The camp was closed after a

successful escape of prisoners.

ChelmoOver 153,000 people were killed in the

camp. On December 8, 1941, the SS carried out their first killing operations. It was the

first camp to use gas vans.

SobiborA minimum of 200,000 people were killed

here. The camp was closed after a successful revolt and 600 prisoners escaped. Trees were

planted on the exact spot just days later.

BelzecAs many as 434,500 Jews were exterminated here. Little is known about the camp since

only one or two prisoners survived.

MajdanekThe camp operated from 1941 to 1944,

killing over 79,000 people. Not hidden in a remote location, the locals were aware of the camps existence. The best preserved camp of the Holocaust since the SS had

little time to destroy it before the Red Army arrived.

AuschwitzThe largest and most recognizable of the Nazi death camps. From 1942, to 1945, 1,100,000 people were systematically

executed here. Those that were not gassed died of starvation, disease, exhaustion, and medical experiments. On January 27, 1945 the camp was liberated by Soviet troops.

The gate at Auschwitz has the infamous motto “work makes you free.”

Jewish men prior to their execution in one of the gas vans.

Unloaded off of the crammed cattle cars, the Jews then went through a process of selection.

SELECTIONSELECTION

At Auschwitz the trains pulled into a mock up of a normal station.

The Jews were helped off the cattle trucks by Jews who were specially selected to help the Nazis

At some death camps the Nazis would play records of classical music to help calm down the new arrivals.

At Auschwitz the new arrivals were calmed down by a Jewish orchestra playing classical music.

All new arrivals went through a process known as ‘selection.’

Mothers, children, the old & sick were sent straight to the ‘showers’ which were really the gas chambers.

The able bodied were sent to work camp were they were killed through a process known as ‘destruction through work.’

Dressing in slave labor clothing.

Laborers in their bunks.

The SS officer is Buchenwald's chief warden, Martin Sommer, who was personally responsible for killing hundreds of Jews.

Jewish laborer shot while on the latrine.

Nazi Warning on the door:

Warning: Poison Gas. Harmful to your health.

Items (rings, crowns, hair, and eye glasses) collected from those Jews that were executed.

The clothing and shoes of Jewish prisoners.

Shrunken heads of concentration camp inmates, tattooed skin parchment, and a lampshade made out of human skin.

Besides outright murder, also human guinea pigs.

The most notorious: Dr. Josef Mengele, at Auschwitz.

His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries.

Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards.

• Sterilization of men and women.

• Endurance of pain to high and low temperatures and pressure.

• Experiments on twins to increase number of multiple births to Aryan women.

• Injections of phenol, directly to the heart, to kill patients.

• Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children together to make Siamese twins .

A prisoner is submerged in a tank filled with cold water. The goal of this type of experiments was to improve military equipment.

High-altitude medical experiments tested how pilots reacted to high-altitude conditions.

Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz.

Man being injected intravenously with sea water, in an attempt to prolong survival.

“ So far as concerns us, we have burned our bridges

behind us. We can no longer turn back, nor do we want to turn back. We shall go down

in history as the greatest statesmen of all time , or its

greatest criminals.”

Joseph Gobbels

• Jews did resist :Jews did resist :• Warsaw Uprising – held out for 42 days!• Uprisings at Treblinka, Auschwitz, Sobibor camps. None successful but

refutes idea that Jews just laid down and died.• Jews joined resistance movements in France and elsewhere.

• Some countries did try to protect their own:• Denmark saved almost all of theirs – clever and ruthless Resistance• King of Sweden wore Jewish patch required by Nazis, as “badge of honor.”• 200,000 of 300,000 French Jews.• Most of Italy’s 50,000. (Many because of Cath. Church. – Church complicity

still a controversy today)• Hungary to save theirs but failed.• A few individuals tried to help Jews, but most, for fear or apathy, stood by.

Some actively aided Nazis.• Subject peoples became SS; others became camp guards.

• Reports began leaking out as early as 1941.

• At first, no one believed. (Who would?) Then, a “certain indifference” set in

• Even media outcry muted• Allies stuck to military objectives

• Admittedly not a lot could be done but bomb railways leading to camps, gas chambers at Auschwitz.

• • Late in war, Germans offer to “sell”

Jews, in return for supplies, but not taken up.

When Allies finally took Poland, found camps and rumors both confirmed and didn’t come close to reality

SS had tried to destroy evidence: blew some crematoriums, shot thousands in mass graves.

Dug up mass graves and tried to burn the bodies.

Allies found unbelievable horrors: Found walking skeletons of survivors with dead eyesMass gravesFound lampshades, gloves, purses, made from human skinFound the mutilated survivors of medical experiments

The genocide of these 6-million people was a genocide of two-thirds of the population of 9-million Jews who had resided in Europe before the

Holocaust.

Country Original Jewish Population

Jews killed Percent Surviving

Poland 3,300,000 3,000,000 10%

Soviet Union 2,850,000 1,525,000 56%

Hungary 650,000 450,000 30%

Romania 600,000 300,000 50%

Germany/Austria 240,000 200,000 17%

Latvia 95,000 85,000 10%

Czechoslovakia 315,000 260,000 18%

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/WWII-HolocaustDeaths-Pie-All.png

Military tribunals in which Allied forces prosecuted the prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi

Germany.

• Paul Rassinier of France, first published in 1948, set forth the main arguments that have been repeated by all subsequent Holocaust deniers:• There had never been a plan for the systematic

annihilation of European Jewry.

• The number of Jewish victims was about one million.

• It was the Jews who had declared war on Germany.

• The survivors’ testimonies are inflated and unreliable.

• Professor Yisrael Gutman argues that the Nazis’ who attempted to cover-up their acts of murder sowed the seeds of denial. The following examples illustrate this point:

1. The absence of any written orders from Hitler concerning the annihilation of the Jews.

2. The use of code words to denote the annihilation of European Jewry. For example, Einsatzgruppen (Special Operations Units), Endloesung (the Final Solution).

3. The formation in 1942 of Unit 1005, a secret unit commanded by Paul Blobel, in order to destroy evidence of the slaughter of Jews in the death pits of the east by burning the corpses.

4. Orders concerning the dismantling of three extermination camps (Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka) and destruction of evidence concerning the mass murder of Jews there.

5. Himmler speech to SS officers in Poznan in October 1943. The destruction of the Jews, he explained, was a glorious page in history that has never been recorded and never shall be. It was clear to him that people at large would not understand this.