The Holocaust
Background and introduction
Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986
National Socialist German
Workers party
Led by Adolph Hitler -
took power in 1933
Symbol: Swastika -
bent cross
Anti-Semitism became
national policy
National Socialist German
Workers party
Aryan: Germans, racially superior to other
races
Aryan master race would dominate the
world through Hitler’s “Third Reich”
Breeding and sterilization programs
designed to purify German population.
Holocaust
The systematic annihilation of 6
million Jews by the Nazi Regime of
Germany during World War II
After Hitler came to power, Jews
were gradually stripped of rights. Next
they were moved into ghettoes then
finally sent to concentration and death
camps.
Holocaust
Other groups victimized by Nazis
political opponents communists
Gypsies Soviet POW’s
disabled persons Poles and Slavs
homosexuals union members
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Anti Semitic Propaganda
Jews blamed for
causing World War I
economic problems 1918-1930
Promoted as an inferior race
identified by appearance
legal basis = grandparents
Nuremberg laws
Defined “Jew”
Stripped Jews of citizenship
Banned Jews from:
vacation resorts
schools
theaters
areas of German cities
Aryanization of Business
Jews fired from government jobs
Jewish lawyers and doctors lost Aryan
clients
Jews forced to sell their businesses
savings accounts and profits subjected to
special taxes.
Kristallnacht
November 1938
The Night of Broken Glass
Official organized violence
against Jews and their
property
Synagogues burned
Windows broken in homes
and businesses
Individuals murdered
Ghettos
Fenced areas of cities where
Jews were forced to live
Provided forced labor pool
Conditions
overcrowding, starvation
disease, exposure
Deportation:
Concentration Camps
Introduced by Hitler in 1933
Jews and others performed slave labor
By 1940, Camps were opened in Poland
as well as Germany
People herded like cattle from ghettos to
railroad cars for transport to camps.
The Final Solution
Wannsee - January, 1942
Top German officials decide to
implement:
“Final Solution of the Jewish
Question”
The Final Solution
Six Camps became killing sites
Zyklon B, Carbon Monoxide and
Cyanide Gas
Victims stripped of valuables
sent to “showers.”
Death Camps
Belzec Treblinka
Sobibor Chelmno
Majdanek
Most victims gassed soon after arrival
Auschwitz-Birkenau
work camp and death camp
Death Camps
Operated by SS -
Security police
Gestapo - Secret
Police
Characterized by:
Barbed wire
Striped uniforms
Birkenau
Inhumane conditions
Auschwitz
Work camp and extermination center
1.25 million people died there - 90% Jews
The main gate at
Auschwitz:
“Work is liberty”
Scenes from Auschwitz
Scenes from Auschwitz
Scenes from Auschwitz
Dr. Mengele “The Angel of Death”
Institute for Racial Hygiene
promote reproduction of Aryans
Dachau
First Medical Experiments on
prisoners
Auschwitz
Responsible for “selection”
Medical Experiments
Twins and dwarfs were the special
interests of Dr. Josef Mengele
Experimentation
surgery
injections
electrocution
starvation
Medical Experiments
Studies aimed at military applications
Effects
of freezing
water
Impact of changing
air pressure
Mengele:
Most Wanted Nazi War Criminal
Charged with 400,000 deaths
Shooting 100 children in the back of the
head
Escaped to Argentina
lived in Argentina and Brazil
Sheltered by two families
died of stroke - Feburary, 1979
1985 - remains exhumed and identified
Death Marches
Spring 1945 - as end of war drew near
Effort to cover up evidence of Genocide
Prisoners marched from camps in Poland
back to Germany
Liberation of
Buchenwald