Holocaust Notes

10 Historical Core Concepts

10 Historical Core Concepts

■​ 1. Pre-War
■​ 2. AntiSemitism
■​ 3. Weimar Republic
■​ 4. Totalitarian State
■​ 5. Persecution
■​ 6. U.S. and World Response
■​ 7. The Final Solution
■​ 8. Resistance
■​ 9. Rescue
■​ 10. Aftermath
Pre-War
■​ Jews were living in every country in Europe before the Nazis came into power in 1933.
■​ Approximately 9 million Jews
■​ Russia and Poland had the largest populations
■​ Jews could be found in all walks of life: farmers, factory workers, business people, doctors, teachers, and craftsmen
Pre-War
■​ Write for five minutes about what you think is going on in the picture.
Pre-War
■​ Group portrait of members of the Jewish community of Sighet in front of a wooden synagogue.
■​ Date: 1930 - 1939 ​
Locale: Sighet, [Transylvania; Baia-Mare] Romania ​
Credit: USHMM, courtesy of Mitchell Eisen ​
Copyright: USHMM

AntiSemitism
■​ Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination for over 2,000 years.
■​ Jews were scapegoats for many problems. For example, people blamed Jews for the “Black Death” plague that killed thousands in Europe
during the Middle Ages.
AntiSemitism
■​ In Russia and Poland in the late 1800s, the government organized attacks on Jewish neighborhoods called pogroms. Mobs
murdered Jews and looted their homes and stores.
■​ Hitler idolized an Austrian mayor named Karl Lueger who used AntiSemitism as a way to get votes in his political campaign.
AntiSemitism
■​ Political leaders who used AntiSemitism as a tool portrayed Judiasm as a race instead of a religion.
■​ Nazi teachers began to apply the “principles” of racial science by measuring skull size and nose length and recording students’ eye
color and hair to determine whether students belonged the the “Aryan race.”
AntiSemitism
■​ The film, Europa, Europa, was the winner of the Best Foreign Film Golden Globe in 1991. It is based on the true story of
Solly, a Jewish teenager, trying to survive in Nazi Germany.
AntiSemitism
■​ Solly becomes a Hitler Youth and is in a Nazi racial science lecture when the teacher uses him to demonstrate who is a true
“Aryan” student.
Weimar Republic
■​ After Germany lost World War I, it became the Weimar Republic.
■​ Many Germans were upset not only that they had lost the war but also that they had to repay (make reparations) to all of the countries
that they had “damaged” in the war.
Weimar Republic
■​ The total bill that the Germans had to “pay” was equivalent to nearly $70 billion.
■​ The German army was limited in size.
■​ Extremists blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in WWI and blamed the German Foreign Minister (a Jew) for his role in reaching a
settlement with the Allies.
Weimar Republic
■​ The German mark became worth less than the paper it was printed on—hyperinflation occurred.
■​ Nearly 6 million Germans were unemployed.
Totalitarian State
■​ Totalitarianism is the total control of a country in the government’s hands
■​ It subjugates the individual’s rights.
■​ It demonstrates a policy of aggression.
Totalitarian State
■​ In a totalitarian state, paranoia and fear dominate.
■​ There is total control over the culture.
■​ The government is capable of genocide and mass murder.
■​ During this time in Germany, the government made laws which restricted the rights of Jews: Nuremberg Laws.
Totalitarian State
■​ The Nuremberg Laws made Jews second-class citizens by taking away voting and other rights. They were prohibited from marrying or
having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood.”
Totalitarian State
■​ After the Nuremberg Laws, like everyone in Germany, Jews were required to carry identity cards, but their cards were now stamped
with a red “J.” This allowed police to easily identify them.
Totalitarian State
■​ The Nazis used propaganda to promote their anti-Semitic ideas.
■​ One such book was the children’s book, The Poisonous Mushroom.
Persecution
■​ Hitler had a three-fold plan for eliminating the Jews:
■​ 1. Expulsion: Get them out of Europe
■​ 2. Ghettos: Put them all together in one place—ghettos
■​ 3. “Final Solution”: annihilation
Persecution
■​ Nazis targeted other individuals and groups in addition to the Jews:
■​ Gypsies (Sinti and Roma)
■​ Homosexuals
■​ Jehovah’s Witness

■​ Handicapped
■​ Poles

Persecution
■​ Kristallnacht was the “Night of Broken Glass” on November 9-10, 1938
■​ Germans attacked synagogues and Jewish businesses
U.S. and World Response
■​ The Evian Conference took place in the summer of 1938 in Evian, France.
■​ 32 countries met to discuss what to do about the Jewish refugees who were trying to leave Germany and Austria.
■​ Despite voicing feelings of sympathy, most countries made excuses for not letting in more refugees.
U.S. and World Response
■​ Some American congressmen proposed the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which offered to let in 20,000 endangered Jewish refugee children, but the
bill was not supported in the Senate.
■​ Anti-Semitic attitudes played a role in the failure to help refugees.
U.S. and World Response
■​ The SS St. Louis tried to seek refuge in Cuba, but the refugees were refused there and in Florida. Most of the passengers
perished in the Holocaust.
Final Solution
■​ Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing squads made up of Nazi (SS) units and police. They killed Jews in mass groups and
buried them.
Final Solution
■​ The Nazis aimed to control the Jewish population by forcing them to live in areas that were designated for Jews only, called ghettos.
■​ Many ghettos were set up in areas where there was already a large population of Jews.
Final Solution
■​ Many ghettos were set off by barbed wire and were guarded by SS or local police.
■​ Jews had to go around streets that ran through the ghetto.
Final Solution
■​ Life in the ghettos was hard: food was rationed; several families often shared a small apartment; disease spread rapidly; heating,
ventilation, and other conveniences were scarce.
■​ Many children became orphans in the ghettos and had to become resourceful.
Final Solution
■​ The Wannsee Conference is where the “final solution” was actually planned and decided.
■​ On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials met to discuss how they would “exterminate” the Jews.
■​ They created the death camps.
Final Solution
■​ Death camps were the means Hitler used to enact his “final solution.”
■​ There were six death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Maidanek, and Belzec.
■​ There were gas chambers, which prisoners were told were “showers” at times.
Final Solution
■​ The gas chambers used “Zyklon B” pellets, which were a highly poisonous insecticide, along with carbon monoxide.
■​ Prisoners then removed hair, gold teeth and fillings before the bodies were burned in ovens in the crematoria or buried in mass graves.
Final Solution
■​ There were many concentration camps at which many people also died due to the conditions: little food and heat, brutal
treatment and poor working conditions.
Resistance
■​ Despite the high risk, some individuals attempted to resist Nazism.
■​ The “White Rose” movement openly protested Nazism in Germany.
Resistance
■​ The White Rose movement was founded in June 1942 by Hans Scholl, 24-year-old medical student, his 22-year-old sister
Sophie, and 24-year-old Christoph Probst.
■​ The White Rose stood for purity and innocence in the face of evil.
■​ In February 1943, Hans and Sophie were caught distributing leaflets and were arrested.
■​ They were executed with Christoph 4 days later.
Resistance
■​ Other famous acts of resistance include the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Uprising), Sobibor escape (Escape from Sobibor),
Sonderkommando blowing up crematorium (The Grey Zone), and Jewish partisans who escaped to fight in units and lived in the forests.
Rescue
■​ Less than one percent of the European population helped in some form of rescue.
■​ Denmark was the only country to actively resist the Nazi’s attempt to deport its Jews.
Rescue
■​ They were able to save 7,220 of the 8,000 Jews who lived there by ferrying them to Sweden.
■​ The Danes proved that widespread support for Jews could save lives.
Rescue
■​ The War Refugee Board was established by the U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and it worked with Jewish
organizations, diplomats from neutral countries and European resistance groups to rescue Jews from Nazi-occupied territories.
Rescue
■​ Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg worked in Hungary to protect tens of thousands of Jews by distributing protective
Swedish (a neutral country) passports.
Aftermath
■​ Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Majdanek in Poland.
■​ British, Canadian, American, and French troops also freed camp prisoners.
■​ Troops were shocked at what they saw.
Aftermath
■​ Some prisoners looked like skeletons.
■​ Many camps had dead bodies lying in piles “like cordwood.”
■​ Many prisoners died even after liberation.
Aftermath
■​ Many of the camp prisoners had nowhere to go, so they became “displaced persons” (DPs).
■​ These persons stayed in DP camps, which were often the same camps in which they had been prisoners.
■​ The conditions were often very poor in the DP camps.
Aftermath
■​ In order to help the problem of displaced persons, the founding of Israel was promoted.
■​ The United States changed its immigration policy to allow Jewish refugees to enter.
Aftermath
■​
■​ The Nuremberg Trials brought some of those responsible for the atrocities of the war to justice.
■​ There were 22 major Nazi criminals tried by the Allied Powers.
Aftermath
■​ The trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany in 1945 and 1946.
■​ 12 prominent Nazis were sentenced to death.
■​ Most of the criminals claimed that they were only following orders, which was judged to be an invalid defense.
Aftermath
■​ Why study the Holocaust?