4. Defining the Holocaust
HOLOCAUST - originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire
the annihilation of the Jews and other
groups of European people under the
Nazi regime during World War II
GENOCIDE: the systematic
extermination of a nationality or group
“Jews
are not
welcome
here”
5. Casualties of the Holocaust:
63% of Jewish population in Europe killed
91% of Jewish population in Poland killed
Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27,
1945. The Soviets found 836, 255 women’s dresses, 348, 000
men’s suits, 38, 000 pairs of men’s shoes and 14, 000 pounds of
human hair. But only… 7, 650 live prisoners
8. How did the Holocaust Happen?
The Power of Words
Anti-Semitism
The Stages of Isolation
9. The Power of Words…
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall
victims to a big lie than a small one”
“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think”
“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth”
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all
evil assumes the living shape of the Jew”
What do all these quotes have in common?
11. Europe’s age-old Anti-Semitism
the hatred of or prejudice
against Jews
common since the Middle Ages
when the Catholic Church
taught that Jews were
responsible for killing Jesus
Jews were expelled for a time
from France (1254), England
(1290), and Spain (1492)
people blamed the Jews for the Black
Death
hundreds were burned at the stake
amidst general persecution and murder
of Jews {16th century drawing }
12. Anti-Semitism
pogroms took place in Russia
towards the end of the 19th century,
Jewish bankers were blamed for
Henry Ford Germany’s economic woes. The Jews
were seen as evil and greedy
capitalists
Jewish Conspiracy
The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion
after the defeat in WWI, German anti-
Semitism reached new heights as Jews
were blamed for the loss
13. The Stages of Isolation (The Holocaust)
The Holocaust was a progression of acts leading to the annihilation of millions:
1: Stripping of Rights
2: Segregation
3: Concentration
4: Extermination
14. 1935
Stage 1: Stripping of Rights
Nuremberg Laws (1935)
stated that all German JEWS were :
stripped of German citizenship
fired from jobs & businesses
boycotted
banned from schools & universities
marriages between Jews and Aryans
forbidden
forced to carry ID cards
Passports stamped with a “J”
forced to wear the arm band of the
Yellow “Star of David”
Jewish synagogues destroyed
forced to pay reparations and a
special income tax
15. Passports to be Seat Restrictions on Streetcars
carried at all times:
“J” for “Juden”
Identification and Registration
17. Kristallnacht - 1938
• the Nazis began deporting Polish Jews living in Germany
• Herschel Grynszpan had been sent by his parents to Paris
• when his family was deported, Grynszpan, by way of
protest, attempts to assassinate a German diplomat in the
Paris embassy (the official dies two days later)
• Nazi hierarchy suggests an international Jewish conspiracy
exists
• back in Germany (and Austria)
anti-Semitic pogroms break out
18. “International Jewish
conspiracy”
• on the “Night of Broken Glass” Jewish shops and synagogues are
damaged, destroyed and looted
• 26,000 Jews are arrested, 91 die
• further economic and political persecution of Jews would follow
• it marks the ominous beginning of the Holocaust
19. Treatment of Jews during the 1930s
Public mistreatment
Burnt synagogues
Looted stores
20. Emigration
early on the Nazi state
offered its Jews a way out:
voluntary emigration
faced with discriminatory
laws and policies, many
Jews felt they had no choice
but to leave
the problem was finding
nations that would take the
Jewish refugees
German Jewish Immigrants reach Montreal in
November 1938.
21. this “First Solution” offered by the Nazis met with little success
Canada, for instance, accepted very few Jews
in 1939, The St. Louis, with 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away. The
ship returned to Europe where 3/4 of the refugees died in concentration
camps
22. 1939
Stage 2: Segregation
GHETTOS
Jews were forced to live in designated
areas called “ghettos” to isolate them
from the rest of society
these enclosed and fortified areas
would become home to the Jews of
occupied Europe
Nazis established 356 ghettos in
Poland, the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, and
Hungary during WWII
ghettos were filthy, with poor
sanitation and extreme overcrowding
Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held
500,000 people and was 3.5 square
miles in size (It was liquidated in
April 1943)
23. The Ghetto Warsaw, the largest
ghetto, held 500,000
people and was 3.5
square miles in size
it was liquidated in April
1943
Registration Card
Moving in…
Warsaw Ghetto
24. Life in the ghettos
Ghetto Ration Card
disease was rampant and food was in such short
supply that many slowly starved to death
ghettos were located both outside of and inside
the cities
25. Nazi ghettos were a preliminary step in the annihilation of the Jews,
eventually becoming transition areas and collection points for deportation
to concentration & death camps
26. Oskar Schindler
“Whoever saves one life,
saves the entire world”
• Oskar Schindler, a vain and greedy German businessman, becomes an unlikely
humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign
• having initially moved to Poland to profit from Jewish slave labour available from
the ghetto, Schindler in time feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews
• Schindler managed to save about 1,100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz
concentration camp
28. 1940
Stage 3: Concentration Camps
camps had existed in Germany since 1933, yet proliferate after 1940
essential to Nazi’s systematic oppression and eventual murder of
its enemies
slave labor is used: “annihilation by work”
prisoners faced undernourishment and starvation
prisoners transported in freight cars designed for cattle
camps built along railroad lines for efficient transportation
29. Heinrich
Himmler
• beginning in 19 38 , J were targeted for internment solely because
ews
they were Jews
• before then, only J who fit one of the earlier categories faced
ews
internment in the camps
• the camps were run by the S. S.
• they used the camps to make money and rented out labour to
industrialists like Krupp
30. WHO ?
Jews
Political adversaries
(Communists &
Social Democrats)
The socially and
racially undesirable
(homosexuals,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Gypsies, the
handicapped)
Prisoners of war
34. Guards
Camps
random acts of
violence were common
survival based on trade
skills / physical strength
the food was terrible
and insufficient
Birkenau
35. Inside the concentration camps
unsanitary, disease- ridden, and lice
infested barracks were the norm
overcrowding was a major problem and
contributed to the spread of diseases (such
as typhus)
36. Yellow: J {Star of David}
ews
Red: P olitical dissidents
Green: Common criminals
Purple: R eligious fundamentalists
Blue: Immigrants
Brown: R and Sinti (Gypsies)
oma
Black: L esbians and " anti-socials"
Pink: Gay men
Eichmann
37. Human
Experimentation
inhumane medical experiments
were conducted
freezing
starvation
exposure to chemicals
Freezing Experiment- Dachau
Josef Mengele
“The Angel of Death”
38. 1942
Stage 4: Extermination
Euthanasia program: Nazi
policy to eliminate those
“unworthy of life” (mentally or
physically challenged, the ill) to
promote Aryan “racial integrity”
[perhaps 75,000 died in this way]
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing
units) had begun operations
aimed at killing entire Jewish
communities in occupied
Eastern Europe (1939-1941)
special action groups that followed
the advancing army to cleanse
conquered areas
39. Einsatzgruppen
ranks composed largely of highly educated and motivated men
many of its leaders represented Nazi intellectual elite
round up local J ews, leaving mass graves in their wake
40.
41. Death Camps—Arrival
DEATH FACTORIES:
Nazi extermination
camps fulfilled the
singular function of mass
murder
43. Death Camps — Selection and
Processing
in the extermination camps, large detention
centres created for the confinement, slave
labour, and mass executions of prisoners, the
“Final Solution” would take place
Jewish children were specifically targeted (kill
the next generation)
44.
45. Death Camps—Final Outcome
called for the complete and mass
annihilation and extermination of
the Jews as well as other groups
Zyklon B gas became the agent used
in the mass extermination
46. Gas Chambers & Crematoriums
prisoners were sent to gas chambers
disguised as showers
Zyklon B gas used to gas people in 3
– 15 minutes
up to 8,000 people were gassed per
day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the
largest death camp with four
operating gas chambers
Gold fillings from victim’s teeth
were melted down to make gold bars
prisoners moved dead bodies to
massive crematoriums
47. Chamber Openings to drop in
Empty Zyklon B Canisters
Gas Canisters (Pellets)
Birkenau Crematorium
48. Nearing the End 1945
By 1945, as Allied troops closed in, the Nazis began destroying
the crematoriums and camps
between 1944-1945, the Nazis ordered the prisoners to
undertake long distance death marches (Todesmarsche)
over 300,000 prisoners perished on these marches
49. 1945
• in January the Soviet army entered
Auschwitz (the largest camp) and
liberated the more than 7,000 mostly ill
and dying prisoners that remained
50. • while rumours of the camps had leaked out, few people
realized the full extent of the slaughter taking place
57. 1945-1949
Aftermath: Nuremberg
Nuremberg Trials: lasting four years, war crimes
trials for Nazi officials began (24 Nazi leaders were
tried; 11 death penalties; three life sentences; four 10-
20 year sentences)
State of Israel created in 1947 due to world sympathy
Yom ha-Shoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day
established in 1951
German government offers pensions
by way of compensation to Holocaust
survivors (of death camps and later the
Ghettos)
Himmler
59. Oskar Schindler
Heroes who saved
Jewish lives...
Raoul Wallenberg
Swedish diplomat stationed in
Hungary.
He helped 95,000 Hungarian Jews
escape by providing them with fake
passports which claimed that the bearers
were Swedish subjects.
He was later arrested by the USSR as a
spy and may have died in a Soviet prison
camp. It is not known for certain.
He was made an honorary citizen of
Canada, the US and Israel.
60. STUDENT NOTES
Points to better understand the Holocaust:
• anti-Semitism had long been present in Europe and Hitler made use of these feelings
• the first stage of the Holocaust involved Stripping away the Rights of Germany’s Jews
• the Nuremberg Laws forced Jews to carry IDs and wear arm bands with the “Star of
David”, forbade intermarriage, and boycotted Jewish businesses
• Kristallnacht in 1938 (when a Jew killed a German diplomat) marked a change in attitude
toward the Jews (synagogues were burned and Jews arrested): the Holocaust had truly
begun
• the second stage of the Holocaust involved segregating the Jews from the rest of the
population and placing them in overcrowded ghettos (the most famous being Warsaw)
• the third stage of the Holocaust placed the Jews into camps where they would be worked
and starved to death (slave labour to support the German military machine)
• Oskar Schindler for a time exploited this source of labour
• Jews would be joined here by homosexuals, Communists, the disabled, Gypsies & others
• the fourth stage of the Holocaust was one of extermination (in areas of recent conquest
by the Einsatzgruppen killing units or in the death camps- like Auschwitz)
MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND:
Nuremberg Laws / Kristallnacht / ghettos / camps
Auschwitz / Oskar Schindler / Einsatzgruppen
61. Swastika: A Symbol of Good or Evil?
• the swastika is an ancient Indian symbol (Sanskrit)
that is over 3,000 years old meaning well being, life
and good luck, prosperity
• the swastika is sacred religious symbol for Hindus,
Jains and Buddhists
•Common symbol in ancient civilizations
(Mesopotamia, India, China, Central and South
America (Maya)
•In 1920, Adolf Hitler decided that the Nazi Party
needed its own insignia and flag and chose the
swastika to represent the mission of the struggle
for the victory of the Aryan man
•Because of the Nazis flag, the swastika soon
became a symbol of hate, anti-Semitism,
violence, death, and murder.
62. The Financial Link
• in Europe, the Medieval Christian Church forbade usury (lending money for
profit) by Christians
• Jews were, however, free to loan money to Gentiles (Christians) but NOT to fellow
Jews (the Old Testament did not permit such charging of interest to Jews)
• the result was Jews came to dominate the money lending business
• in Europe’s cities they were forced to live in ghettos (Social Exclusion)
• in time Christians (during Italy’s Renaissance) would legitimize the lending of
money through the creation of banks, thus making it respectable
Notes de l'éditeur
“ Work will make you free” Auschwitz main gate message; population of Ontario is around 11 million; pronounced “fry”;
Sign: “Jews are not Welcome Here”
“ death gate” at Auschwitz;
Eugene Delacroix- Columbus before Ferdinand and Isabella;
The eternal Jew; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan to achieve global domination, first published in 1903 in Russia (published in USA by Henry Ford);
Photo: Mass Killing in Western Russia
Reparations of 1 billion Reichmarks after Kristallnacht; Radios and telephones were removed from Jews ;
S.A. enforcing the boycott (bottom right) ; sign in 1933 (bottom left);
Sent to paris while awaiting exile to Palestine where his parents wanted to send him for safety; had received a letter from his family describing the horrible conditions they experienced in their deportation. Seeking to alleviate their situation, he tried to talk with an uncooperative Ernst vom Rath, secretary of the German Embassy in Paris; Herschel Grynszpan (Greenspan) would be seized by the nazis when they invaded France ‘40 and returned to Germany for trial (he lived in camps until 1944 perhaps when he was probably killed); takes place November 9-10; Ernst vom Rath was the official and even Hitler’s personal physician was involved in the attempt to keep him alive (he had a state funeral); he died on the 9 th (just happened to be the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch – greatest day of Nazi calendar) and Goebbels gave an inflammatory speech against the Jews and within hours the pogrom had begun;
Video clip for liquidation of Warsaw ghetto = Schindler’s List [disc 1] Chapter 14 - 7 min duration, from 58 min-1:03 or 1:10; within Germany this begins in ’38 with Jews placed in camps and then once war starts in ’39 outside Germany in both camps and ghettos;
Ration card: Allows Bearer 300 Calories per Day; Boundary Wall, Warsaw Ghetto; Registration Card in Warsaw Ghetto. Top Half Gives Personal Details, Bottom Half Records Death in Ghetto;
Video clip for entering ghetto = Schindler’s List [disc 1] Chapter 5 - 5 min from start of chapter to 24 min mark; Oskar and Emilie in ‘46 and his enamel factory pictured; Oscar grew wealthy initially but then began to shield his workers from the horrors, moving them to Brunnlitz in Czechoslovakia in Oct 1944 (it was liberated in Oct ‘45); he would go to Argentina after the war (went bankrupt there, came back to Germany where he had many failed business ventures;
In the Boer War the British had done this to the Boer women and children; The first two concentration camps established were Dachau (near Munich) and Buchenwald in ‘33;
Sobibor (Poland) founded 1942; Gross-Rosen (Poland) 1940; Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland) 1940; Bergen-Belsen (Germany) ‘43; Buchenwald (Germany) 1937; Dachau (Germany) ‘33; Treblinka (Poland) ’42; Himmler was a close devotee of Hitler and was a former chicken farmer;
Jews Loaded Onto Trains Heading to Death Camps
Prisoner Jacket of a Jehovah’s Witness (purple triangle);
Lower right (used in human experiments);
Building at Auschwitz filled with clothes; Disc 1 Chapter 17 (concentration camps / factory)- 4 min duration from start of Chap 17; Elie Wiesel in Buchenwald
Electrified Fence at Birkenau ; they got 200 calories per day (to have a healthy diet, one needs 2000-2500 calories/ day);
two triangles overlaid to form a Star of David, with the word "Jude" (Jew) inscribed; mischlings, i.e., those who were deemed to be only part Jewish, often wore a single yellow triangle; pictured: Adolf Eichmann—SS Specialist in Zionist Affairs
Children at Auschwitz; Mengele- a German SS officer and a physician in Auschwitz; fled to Argentina after the war;
Euthanasia refers primarily to acts perpetrated against German citizens; Einsatzgruppen followed the German army and wiped out Jewish communities along the way (this was found to be stressful on the executioners so the camps were devised as a solution);
Of the 25 Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando leaders, 15 of them bore the title of PhD, most of them doctors of jurisprudence or philosophy; Romanian allies wiped out thousands in Odessa;
Adolf Eichmann & Reinhard Heydrich = Chief architects of the Final Solution ;
Extermination camps (other camps were labour / concentration); interactive map link (http://www.the-map-as-history.com/demos/tome08/05a-final_solution_holocaust_demo.php ) shows Holocaust from einsatzgruppen stage through to Auschwitz (about 8 min); Auschwitz gets busy in 1942...
Video clip for Auschwitz entry by train and showers = Schindler’s List [disc 2] Chapter 3 (or Chap 30) 5 min duration from 17:30-24:00 min mark; BOTTOM PHOTO- on April 14, 1945 Bodies are found Still Inside ovens;
From 1942-1945, over 3 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other groups were murdered in the gas chamber & crematorium system established in the extermination camps ;
Video clip for dismantling of camps & burning of bodies = Schindler’s List [disc 2] Chapter 1 (or 28) 3 min; Video clip for liberation of camps = Schindler’s List [disc 2] Chapter 11 (or Chap 38) from start of chapter lasting 2 min;
In Russia
Crate Full of Wedding Rings From Buchenwald
Survivors greet American liberators, Dachau, April 29, 1945
Female SS Guards Forced to Bury Camp Victims After the War ;
A German Civilian views the result;
The indictments were for: Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace War crimes (Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; Crimes against humanity; Hitler’s Deputy Fuehrer, Hermann Goering, was found guilty but committed suicide before he could be hanged (founded the Gestapo secret police) [ Von Ribbentrop: Foreign Minister; found guilty and hung] ; Heinrich Himmler (pictured) committed suicide before he could stand trial by taking cyanide; propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels killed himself and family before he could be tried; Hideki Tojo was also hanged;
Dante had a special place in hell (Inferno) for usurers; individual lenders (loan sharks) were not acceptable either (as they had to be mean in order to survive = disreputable) so the Medici formed banks (era of Machiavelli ; the Medici bankrolled the Renaissance) and these Florentine bankers made money on int’l trade and received a commission (compensation) on currency exchange (hence the interest was hidden) and in time; the Americans further encouraged business by legalizing bankruptcy (Henry Ford was twice bankrupt) – the Brits for years put their debtors in prison; IMAGES – Dante’s Inferno + Jesus cleansing the temple of merchants and money traders;