The HolocaustCh. 18, Sec 3

• Jews persecuted in Europe since mid-1800s with rise of anti-Semitism.– Discrimination, hostility to Jews.

• After WWI, many (including Hitler) blamed Jews for German loss, Depression.– Helped increase pride of “real” Germans.

Persecution under Hitler• 1933-Hitler takes power, begins official

persecution of Jews.– Became known as Holocaust.

• Attacks started slowly, grew quickly.– Boycotts of Jewish businesses.– 1935-Nuremberg laws stripped Jews of citizenship,

forbade marriage to non-Jews.– Radio, newspapers constantly attacked, mocked

Jews.– Had to sell businesses to non-Jews cheap.– Jewish doctors, lawyers could not work for non-Jews.– Jewish students expelled from all schools.

– Forced to sew yellow Star of David on clothes.• Many Jews believed they could live through

Hitler until he lost power.– Many others fled Germany as immigrants or

refugees.– As more & more Jews fled, other countries

(including USA) refused to let them in, due to Depression.

• November 9, 1938-Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass).– Nazi gov’t & citizens attacked Jewish stores,

synagogues, homes, burning & destroying.– Thousands arrested.– Jews forced to pay fines to gov’t for cleanup.

• After Kristallnacht, Jews rounded up, sent to concentration camps.– Other “undesirables”-homeless, Gypsies,

Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, political opponents.

– Used as slave labor for war factories.• When Poland fell, Polish Jews rounded up, put

in ghettos.– Biggest-Warsaw ghetto-400,000 Jews (30% of

Warsaw’s population crammed into 3% of city.• Denied food, medical care, thousands died monthly.

• After 1941, Hitler unleashed Einsatzgruppen.– Mobile killing squads-targeted Communist leaders,

all Jews in German-occupied lands.• Firing squads.

• Hitler needed to kill more Jews faster.– Jan. 1942-Wannsee Conference.– “Final Solution to Jewish question”.• Use concentration camps to “liquidate” Jews.

– Genocide-deliberate destruction of an entire ethnic or cultural group.

• Jan. 1942-camps began extermination, starting at Auschwitz.– Used Zyklon B cyanide gas, in disguised shower

rooms.– 6 death camps in Poland.

• Jews from western Europe shipped in cattle cars to camps.– Inspected-fit worked as slave labor, all others

executed on arrival.– ID numbers tattooed on arms.– Striped uniforms, starvation diet, overcrowded

barracks.• At Auschwitz, 12,000/day killed & cremated.

• Jews did fight back.– Joined resistance groups, rioted in Treblinka camp

so fiercely Treblinka had to be closed (1943).– Biggest uprising in Warsaw ghetto, crushed by

Nazis.• 1944-FDR started War Refugee Board-helped

save & relocate 200,000 people.– Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg rescued

thousands of Hungarian Jews by giving passports.• Late 1944-Allies began to liberate camps,

world found out how evil Nazis were.

Raoul Wallenberg

Oskar Schindler

• Nazis killed 6 million Jews in Holocaust.– 2/3 of all Jews in Europe.– 5-6 million others also killed.

• After war, Allies held Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.– 24 top Nazis, camp commanders, guards tried.– 12 executed.– “Just following orders” was not an excuse.