Chapter 18: Section 3

1. Chapter 18: Section 3 The Holocaust

2. Setting the Scene • Jewish prejudice had existed in Europe for centuries • some thinkers claimed that Germanic peoples whom they called “Aryans” were superior to Middle Eastern peoples called Semites • Semites included Arabs and Jews German children read an anti-Jewish propaganda book titled DER GIFTPILZ ("The Poisonous Mushroom"). The girl on the left holds a companion volume, the translated title of which is "Trust No Fox." Germany, ca. 1938.

3. used ideas to persecute any “non-Aryans” • anti-Semitism – used to describe the discrimination or hostility, often violent, directed at Jews A Jewish family in the Piotrkow Trybunalski ghetto. All those pictured died in the Holocaust. Poland, 1940.

4. the suffering and hardships brought on by WW I and the Great Depression caused many to look for someone to blame for their problems • in Mein Kampf, Hitler revived the idea and he particularly despised the mixing of the two races • Aryan and Jewish A Nazi propaganda poster encourages healthy Germans to raise a large family. The caption, in German, reads: "Healthy Parents have Healthy Children." Germany, date uncertain.

5. Persecution in Germany • Hitler made anti-Semitism the official policy of the nation • Holocaust – Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of European Jews • some 6 million Jews • 5 to 6 million other people would also die in Nazi captivity

6. Nazi Policies • early forms of persecution aimed to exclude Germany’s Jews from all aspects of their country’s political, social, and economic life • April 1933 – Germany orders a one-day boycott of businesses owned by Jews

7. 1935 Nuremberg Laws strip Jews of their German citizenship & outlaw marriage between Jews and non-Jews • used newspapers and radio to attack and caricature Jews as enemies of Germany

8. 1938 – Nazis forced Jews to surrender their own businesses to Aryans for a fraction of their value • Jewish doctors and lawyers were forbidden to serve non-Jews • Jewish students were expelled from public schools A Roundup of Jews

9. What is a Jew? • any person who had three or four Jewish grandparents, regardless of their current religion • any person who had two Jewish grandparents and practiced the Jewish faith

10. identity cards were marked with a red letter “J” • Jews also received new middle names “Sarah” for women and “Israel” for men • forced to sew yellow stars marked “Jew” on their clothing • practices exposed Jews to public attacks and police harassment

11. Passports issued to a German Jewish couple, with "J" for "Jude" stamped on the cards. Karlsruhe, Germany, December 29, 1938.

12. Hitler’s Police • Gestapo – Germany’s new secret state police • pursued enemies of the Nazi regime • SS ~ Schutzstaffel – elite guard that developed into a private army of the Nazi party • Gestapo became part of the SS

13. duties included guarding concentration camps – places where political prisoners are confined, usually under harsh conditions • held Communists and other “undesirables” • Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, and the homeless April 12, 1945: Nordhausen Concentration Camp,where 20,000 inmates were believed to have died.

14. Kristallnacht • many believed they could endure until Hitler lost power or that staying in Germany was better than going to a foreign country with no money • views changed on November 9, 1938 • Nazi thugs throughout Germany and Austria looted and destroyed Jewish stores, houses, and synagogues

15. Kristallnacht – “Night of the Broken Glass” • referencing the broken windows of the Jewish shops • nearly every synagogue was destroyed • thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps • then, the Jews were fined to pay for the damages of the night

16. Destroyed Synagogues

17. Refugees Seek an Escape • Germany’s remaining Jews sought any means possible to leave the country • 1933-1937 – 130,000 Jews fled Germany • many moved to neighboring countries Two young cousins shortly before they were smuggled out of the Kovno ghetto. A Lithuanian family hid the children and both girls survived the war. Kovno, Lithuania, August 1943.

18. began to seek protection in the United States, Latin America, and British-ruled Palestine • few countries welcomed newcomers during the hard times of Depression • President Roosevelt – called for an international conference to discuss the growing number of refugees German Jews, seeking to emigrate, wait in the office of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (Relief Organization of German Jews). On the wall is a map of South America and a sign about emigration to Palestine. Berlin, Germany, 1935.

19. German Jews crowd the Palestine Emigration Office in an attempt to leave Germany. Berlin, Germany, 1935.

20. Scene during the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees. On the far right are two of the U.S. delegates: Myron Taylor and James McDonald of the President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees. Evian-les-Bains, France, July 1938. • Evian Conference – France July 1938, failed to deal with the situation • each of the 32 nations represented (with the exception of the Dominican Republic); including the United States refused to open its doors to more immigrants

21. From Murder to Genocide A sign, in both German and Latvian, warning that people attempting to cross the fence or to contact inhabitants of the Riga ghetto will be shot. Riga, Latvia, 1941-1943. • as German armies overran more and more territory, more Jews came under German control • there were 2 million Jews in Poland alone • began establishing ghettos – self-contained areas, usually surrounded by a fence, wall, or armed guards, where Jews were forced to live

22. Warsaw Ghetto • 400,000 Jews, 30% of the population of the Polish capital were forced to live in an area less than 3% of the entire city • sealed with a wall, topped with barbed wire, and armed guards • received little food; hunger, overcrowding, and a lack of sanitation brought on disease • thousands died in the ghettos, but the Nazis wanted more efficient ways of killing Jews An emaciated child eats in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.

23. The Einsatzgruppen • Einsatzgruppen – mobile killing squads • ordered to shoot Communist political leaders as well as all Jews in German-occupied territory Members of an Einsatzkommando (mobile killing squad) before shooting a Jewish youth. The boy's murdered family lies in front of him; the men to the left are ethnic Germans aiding the squad. Slarow, Soviet Union, July 4, 1941.

24. Over one thousand Jews from the Ukrainian town of Lubny, ordered to assemble for "resettlement," in an open field before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppen. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941. Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments. This photo, originally in color, was part of a series taken by a German military photographer. Copies from this collection were later used as evidence in war crimes trials. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.

25. rounded up their victims and drove them to gullies or freshly dug pits where they were shot • Babi Yar – outside Kiev, Nazis killed more than 33,000 Jews in two days Soviet investigators (at left) view an opened grave at Babi Yar. Kiev, Soviet Union, 1944 At Babi Yar, members of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) C force groups of Jews to hand over their possessions and undress before being shot in the ravine. Near Kiev, Soviet Union, September 29 or 30, 1941.

26. Wannsee Conference – German officials met for a more suitable approach • developed what came to be known as the “final solution to the Jewish question” • would lead to the construction of special camps in Poland where genocide – the deliberate destruction of an entire ethnic or cultural group; was to be carried out against Europe’s Jews Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, held meeting to develop the “final solution”. Place uncertain, 1942.

27. The Death Camps • chose poison gas as the most effective way to kill people • pesticide called Zyklon B • developed a specially designed gas chamber disguised as a shower room at Auschwitz in western Poland • outfitted six camps • death camps – existed primarily for mass murder

28. The valuables displayed here were confiscated from prisoners by German guards at the Buchenwald concentration camp and later found by American forces after the liberation of the camp. Buchenwald, Germany, after April 1945. Human remains found in the Dachau concentration camp crematorium after liberation. Germany, April 1945.

29. Jews were crowded into train cars built for cattle and transported to these extermination centers • nearly all were murdered soon after they arrived Deportation of Jews from Kovno Ghetto to Auschwitz- October 26, 1943

30. at Auschwitz and Majdanek they were organized into a line and quickly inspected • elderly, women with children, and those who looked too weak to work were headed into gas chambers and killed • prisoners then transported the dead to the crematoria – huge ovens where the bodies were burned

31. those who survived the initial inspection worked average life expectancy at Auschwitz was a few months men and women had their heads shaved and a registration number tattooed on their arms given one set of clothes and slept in crowded unheated barracks on hard wooden pallets

33. daily food was imitation coffee, a small piece of bread, and thin, foul-tasting soup made with rotten vegetables • disease swept through camps and claimed those who were weak from harsh labor and starvation • others died from medical experiments or periodic “selections” where the weak were sent to the gas chambers

34. Auschwitz • 12,000 could be gassed and cremated daily • total of 1.5 million people were killed there

35. Fighting Back • some Jews resisted and joined underground resistance groups • staged violent uprisings • August 1943 – rioting Jews damaged the Treblinka death camp so badly it had to be closed SS and Police Leader Juergen Stroop interrogates two Jews arrested during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943.

36. Jewish partisans, survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, at a family camp in Wyszkow forest. Poland, 1944. • escape was the most common form of resistance • most were later caught, but some managed to spread word of the death camps

37. those in the Warsaw ghetto learned the fate of 300,000 Jews who had been sent to Treblinka • April 1943 – 50,000 Jews still in the ghetto rose up against final deportation • for 27 days they held off the Germans with pistols and homemade bombs • those who survived were severely punished by the Germans Three participants in the Treblinka uprising who escaped and survived the war. Warsaw, Poland, 1945.

38. Jewish resistance fighters captured by SS troops during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943. Ruins of the Warsaw ghetto after the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, May 1943.

39. German soldiers direct artillery against a pocket of resistance during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943. Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943.

40. Deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto during the ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, May 1943. Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943.

41. German soldiers arrest Jews during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, May 1943. German soldiers lead Jews captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising to the assembly point for deportation. Poland, May 1943.

42. Photo taken in Secretary of State Cordell Hull's office on the occasion of the third meeting of the War Refugee Board. Hull is at the left, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., is in the center, and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson is at the right. Washington, D.C., United States, March 21, 1944. Rescue and Liberation • US government knew about the mass murder as early as November 1942 • January 1944 – Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board (WRB) to try to help people threatened by the Nazis • helped save some 200,000 Swedish Jews

43. thousands of Jews died on death marches from camp to camp as their German guards moved them ahead of advancing armies • in 1945 the first American troops witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust for the first time Prisoners on a death march from Dachau move towards the south along the Noerdliche Muenchner street in Gruenwald. German civilians secretly photographed several death marches from the Dachau concentration camp as the prisoners moved slowly through the Bavarian towns. Few civilians gave aid to the prisoners on the death marches. Germany, April 29, 1945.

44. “The odor was so bad I backed up, but I looked at a bottom bunk and there I saw one man. He was too weak to get up; he could just barely turn his head…He looked like a skeleton; and his eyes were deep set. He didn’t utter a sound; he just looked at me with those eyes, and they still haunt me today.” • Leon Bass • American Soldier

45. Soon after liberation, surviving children of the Auschwitz camp walk out of the children's barracks. Poland, after January 27, 1945. Soon after liberation, camp survivors from Buchenwald's "Children's Block 66"--a special barracks for children. Germany, after April 11, 1945.

46. Allies put former Nazi leaders on trial • charged with crimes against peace, against humanity, and war crimes

47. International Military Tribunal conducted the Nuremberg Trials – 12 of the 24 Nazi defendants received the death sentence • trials established the important principle that individuals must be responsible for their own actions • firmly rejected the claim by the defendants that they were only “following orders”