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The Holocaust
Background Info.• Goal of Nazi Germany: extermination of all Jews in Europe• Out of 8.3 millions Jews, 6 million were killed• Other victims of Nazi Germany:
– Gypsies– Christians suspected of Jewish ancestry– Homosexuals– Handicapped– Anyone opposing the Nazis– Anyone considered “inferior” to the Aryan race
• Total estimated # of people killed: 13-15 million
How it began• Centuries of Christian anti-Semitism had already
existed• Hitler became dictator of Germany
– began the war against the Jews
• Economic hardships in Germany were blamed on the Jews
"What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the
Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor.
When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the
Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of
capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods.”
- Joseph Goebbels—head of propaganda
The New Nazi Religion
Initial treatment of the Jews• Jewish businesses were boycotted and vandalized• Fired from jobs in government and universities• Lost citizenship and all rights• Kristallnacht—Nov. 9,10, 1938—Nazi attack on
Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues• Forbidden to intermarry with Germans• Evicted from their homes and forced to live in the
ghettos
Hitler Youth
Sept. 1933
Hitler Youth—throwing mock grenades in 1936
Hitlerjugend"Youth Serves the Führer"
“None of us who rose to any high rank in the Hitler Youth could say
that we had a clear conscience. All of us, perhaps unknowingly, had
looked the other way, preferring not to know the truth. Sadly, now, we re the other part of the Holocaust, the
generation burdened with the responsibility for Auschwitz. That is our life sentence for having been the
enthusiastic followers of Adolf Hitler.”
Alfons Heck, from Parallel Journeys
1935: Two Jewish pupils are humiliated at their school and before their classmates. The inscription reads, "The Jew is
our greatest enemy! Beware of the Jew!
First they came for the Jewsand I did not speak out -because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communistsand I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for meand there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Martin Niemöller –wrote after imprisoned at Dachau, a pastor in the German Confessing Church who spent seven years in a
concentration camp.
Nuremberg Laws
Forced to Wear the Star of David on all Clothing
Kristallnacht—Nov. 9, 10 1938 (Night of the Broken
Glass)
Burning Synagogue in Baden-Baden
Shattered Storefront
The Ghettos
Deportation
Cattle Wagons
The concentration/death camps• Shipped from the ghettos to camps in cattle
wagons• Hard physical labor, meager rations, brutality and
abuse• The “Final Solution” (plan to exterminate the Jews)• At the camps, the Jews were packed into chambers• A gas called “Cyclon B” was dispersed• Bodies were burned in a crematory
Elie Wiesel at Dachau--1945
“How do you teach events that defy knowledge, experiences that go beyond
imagination? How do you tell children, big and small, that society could lose its mind and start murdering its own soul and its
own future?How do you unveil horrors without offering at the same time some measure of hope?Hope in what? In whom? In progress, in
science and literature and God?”
~ Elie Wiesel
Concentration Camps
Auschwitz
“Work Shall You Make You Free”—at Auschwitz
Roll Call At Buchenwald--1938
Cyclon B
Crematory
An American officer’s description of Ohrdruf, the first camp liberated by the Americans
“As we burst into the camp and spread out, I saw in front of me a row of wooden one-story
barracks… One of my men came for me, ‘You’d better come with me.’ His voice was serious. I followed him across the yard to a building…The
windows were all sealed up. Outside… eight automobiles, all up on blocks… The exhausts
were piled in through the wall of that building. We went inside the door. In the room… there was human excretion, vomit, urine, blood all over the
room. I did not understand.”
Con’t.
“And there were showerheads and faucets, all over the wall. One of my men called out to me. He said: ‘What
the hell’s going on here? There is no water.’ We entered the back room filled with benches and tables. And on one
of the tables there were thousands of gold wedding rings… piles of human teeth with gold fillings… It was
obvious that someone was there counting them. We went outside into the yard. In front of me I could see human
hair. There were piles of boots, shoes, suitcases, eyeglasses. To my left were four-wheel hay wagons and
two-wheel pushcarts. These wagons contained nude bodies… men, women and children, even babies. All
nude, all dead, all piled as high as they could basically pile them.”
The end of WWII • Germany was defeated in May of 1945• The survivors:
– Most emigrated to Palestine (now Israel)– The State of Israel was established as a Jewish
homeland in 1948– Others came to the U.S. or any country that
would accept them
Palestine—Israel Created in 1948