2. Hitler and the Nazis believed there was one ‘master race’ that was superior and better than
everyone else…
To qualify to be an Aryan, you had to have/be;
• Blue eyes
• Blonde hair
• Pure German roots
• No Jewish heritage
• German/Northern European
Hitler believed there was three types of white person;
Latin Aryan and Slavs. He also called Japanese people
yellow Aryans.
3. • Jews
• The gays
• Black people
• Disabled people
• Jehovah witnesses
• Gypsies
• Social democrats
• The mentally retarded
• The deaf
• Transsexuals
• Religious dissidents
• Soviets
• Poles
• Other political opponents
4. • Hitler blamed the Jews for all the misfortunes that had befallen Germany; The loss of the
First World War was the result of a Jewish conspiracy, the Treaty of Versailles was also a
Jewish conspiracy designed to bring Germany to her knees and the hyperinflation of 1923
was the result of an international Jewish attempt to destroy Germany.
• On buses, trains and park benches, Jews had to sit on seats marked for them. Children at
schools were taught specifically anti-Semitic ideas. Jewish school children were openly
ridiculed by teachers and the bullying of Jews in the playground by other pupils went
unpunished. If the Jewish children responded by not wanting to go to school, then that
served a purpose in itself and it also gave the Nazi propagandists a reason to peddle the
lie that Jewish children were inherently lazy and could not be bothered to go to school.
5. • Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning people's community. The Nazis wanted
Germans who could contribute to society through work, military service or mother hood. Everyone
else, including the severely disabled, mentally ill and unhealthy, were seen as a burden on the
community.
6. • They were passed in 1935 and their job was to
deny Jews citizenship In Germany. The Reich
citizenship war made Jews ‘subject’ rather that
citizens. This meant that the Jews lost the right to
vote and become government officials. One law
named ‘the protection of German blood and
honour’ banned marriages between Jews and
Aryans.
7. • The most violent actions taken against the Jews in the years 1933 to 1939 occurred on
the ninth and tenth of November 1938. This followed the murder of Ernst Von Rath, a
secretary in the German embassy in Paris by a polish Jew. At a reunion of those involved
in the Munich putsch, Goebbels seized this event as an excuse to suggest a campaign of
terror against the Jews.
• It was called ‘Kristallnacht’ (the night f broken glass) because thousands of Jewish shop
windows were shattered and 815 shops were destroyed, 191 synagogues se on fire and
76 synagogues demolished. In addition to this, 91 Jews were killed and over 20,000 were
arrested.
8. • The Second World War, and the chaos this brought, gave Hitler even more freedom to
bring death and destruction to Jewish communities throughout Europe.
9. • Ghettos were the first solution. The Nazis gathered up all the Jews in the towns and put
them into Ghettos. Walls were built round these establishments to keep the Jews in. The
Germans only allowed starvation rations in the Ghettos and, as a result, thousands dies
from hunger, the intense cold or the diseases. About 55,000 people died in the Warsaw
ghetto.
10. • The Nazis organised special murder squads known as the Einsatzgruppen, who moved
behind the advancing German armies with the purpose of rounding up and killing Jews.
They raided towns and villages, picked out any Jews and marched them to the outskirts of
the town where they were forced to dig their own graves. They would then stand on the
edge of these pits and were shot until they fell in. These groups were killing on a regular
basis and some went mentally crazed and had to be captured by their own people before
they killed more. It is estimated that over two million Russians, mainly Jews, were killed
by the einsatzgruppen by 1943.
11. • Just before the outbreak of the second world war, the persecution of the Jews in Germany
was intensified. In January 1939, the Reich central office was set up. It’s main goal was to
force German Jews to emigrate. Because of the outbreak of the war, the persecution of
the Jews was again intensified. Because of war, they were allowed to be more ruthless
against the Jews without the worlds opinion. Previous leverage against the Jews meant
the Nazis had control over a lot of people so could prevent the Jews from escaping and
emigrating away from what the Nazis had planned .It also meant they had to get rid of the
Jews quicker and more efficiently because there were so many of them. This lead to the
introduction of death camps where millions of people were sent to be slaughtered.
12. • Many Jews and others were killed at this extermination camp. If you were not immediately
killed you would have a very hard life as a slave labourer while trying to survive on a
starvation diet designed to kill you within a few months. On arrival, those who were fit for
work were sent to the slave labour camps, those who were not were sent to get a ‘shower’
in the gas chambers. Their bodies were stripped of clothes/shoes, valuables and their
mouths were searched for and gold plated teeth before they were cremated to get rid of
any evidence.
