THE HOLOCAUST• The term Holocaust means total burnt offering. • Holocaust is a term used to describe widespread

destruction it is capitalized when referring specifically to massive killings, especially that of the Jews during WWII.

• The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of not only 6 million Jews but two-thirds of the total European Jewish population.

• Although approximately 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, approximately 6 million other people also died in Hitler’s concentration camps these include but are by no means limited to the Roma, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Slavic peoples and homosexuals.

The “Big Lie” and Mein Kampf

• Before Hitler seized power in Germany, he wrote a book called “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), in which he outlined his beliefs and plans

-He believed that lies, warfare, and terror tactics were acceptable means to obtain his goals.

-He believed that the Aryan people were the “master race” superior to all other people, especially Jewish people.

• -Hitler blamed the Jews and used them as a “scapegoat” (became known as the “Big Lie”) for Germany’s WWI loss and for the economic depression that followed.

• -Mein Kampf contained a plan to eliminate all Jewish people, to take over the Soviet Union, and to invade France. –Hitler's followers, the Nazis, adopted these beliefs.

• This book was published in 1925.• When Hitler took power he put these plans into action.

Anti-Semitism

• Anti-Semitism: is prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. A person who holds such positions is called an "antisemite". It is a form of racism. was a powerful force outside of Germany as well as inside the German nation.

• This becomes clear as the collaboration of annexed countries governments make little effort to save the Jews in there populations from the horrors of the holocaust

A child dying in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto September 19, 1941

Nuremberg Decrees of 1935 • Nazis took measures to isolate the Jews from the rest of

society.• Jews (and others considered “undesirable”) were

identified, concentrated into “Ghettos” , forbidden to hold public jobs; their property was stolen and they were forced to endure physical abuse and were murdered without consequence

• In 1936 Adolf Eichmann established the Jewish Bureau to systematize the processing of the Jewish population

• First it tried to remove Jews through emigration, however other countries (excepting The British Mandate of Palestine, which received 1500 people a month) would not take them.

The "Nuremberg Laws" Only people with four German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood". A Jew is someone who descends from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). In the middle stood people of "mixed blood" of the "first or second degree."

Kristallnacht

• In a single night, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of more than 200 Synagogues, and the ransacking of tens of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes.

• In addition to property damage Jewish citizens were attacked on the street

Damage done on Kristallnacht

The Goal of the Holocaust•The purpose of the Holocaust was to enact the Nazis planned depopulation programs and mass extermination of those people they believed were “undesirable”•The mass murder of the Holocaust affected every nation under German hegemony•Objective: the “Final Solution” genocide for Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and Slavic people•In the West: The German and Vichy French state seized Jewish property and identified individuals for transportation to death camps•Germany declared itself “Jew-free” in 1943, but at the end of the war there were still 33 000 German Jews, some how they had survived.

A photo of the selection process at Auschwitz. The photos show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the Berehov Ghetto, which itself was a collecting point for Jews from several other small towns.

The Concentration Camps

• When. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER President of the United States learned about the concentration camps, he ordered as many photographs taken as possible,

• He had the German population of the surrounding cities taken to the concentration camps to see the horror, and in some cases had them bury the dead. Liberation of Buchenwald Belsen

Persecution of the Roma• The Roma were nomadic people that believed

to have come originally from northwest India.• Like Jews, they were deprived of their civil

rights.• The fate of the Romanic peoples paralleled

that of the Jews after the beginning of World War II they were deported and murdered.

• In total, hundreds of thousands of Roma were killed during the Holocaust.

Romani children in Auschwitz (one of the death camps), victims of medical experiments

Persecution of the Jehovah’s witnesses

• The Jehovah’s witnesses were marked with purple triangular badges.

• The Witnesses were a relatively small group of prisoners in the concentration camps.

• If Jehovah's Witnesses within the camps signed documents renouncing their religious beliefs, they would be freed. Very few, signed the declarations.

Persecution of Homosexuals• A state policy of persecution of homosexuals

began in Germany in 1933. • Publications by and about homosexuals were

prohibited and burned .• Some homosexuals spent time in regular

prisons, and an estimated 5,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps.