Holocaust

HOLOCAUST

“ Holocaust”

from the Greek word holókauston

olon ="completely"

kauston ="burnt"

Map of Europe showing the total Jewish population of each country in 1939.

Joseph Stalin – 25 million killed a killer twice as big as Hitler

Stalin’s Purges and Forced Famine [1932-1938]

Stalin systematically killed approximately 25 million people from 1930-1958

Estimated Death Toll:

2,000,000 Jews

5-8 million Ukrainians

14-15 million Soviet peasants

10 million political dissidents

The combined tragedy of the Soviet’s political genocide exceeds even the scope of the Nazi Holocaust.

Today’s revolts in Chechnya, Georgia and other former republics of the U.S.S.R., have deep roots in the atrocities of the Stalin era.

Rise of the Nazi Party (1918-1933) Nazification (1933-1939) The Ghettos (1939-1941) The Camps (1941-1942) Resistance (1942-1944) Rescue and Liberation (1944-1945) Aftermath (1945-2007)

In total, the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945. Jews were not allowed to leave the so-called "Jewish residential districts," under penalty of death.

All ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions . The smallest ghetto housed approximately 3,000 people. Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held 400,000 people . Lódz, the second largest, held about 160,000.

The Nazis undertook to liquidate the ghettos as they began full implementation of "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in 1942 . Massive deportations of Jews to concentration and death camps continued until the summer of 1944. By that time, almost all of the ghettos had been liquidated.

There were a)concentration camps, b)forced labor camps, c)extermination or d)death camps, e)transit camps, and f)prisoner-of-war camps . The living conditions of all camps were brutal.

Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen.

By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews.

The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing

Wannsee Conference - January 1942

Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting of Nazi government officials

Presented the Final Solution, the mass murder plot of 11 million Jews and 30 million Slavs

DEATH TOLLS

Treblinka - 750,000 Jews

Belzec - 550,000 Jews

Sobibór - 200,000 Jews

Chelmno - 150,000Jews

Lublin/Majdanek - 50,000 Jews

Auschwitz - 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews.

VICTIMS

PERPETRATORS

BYSTANDERS

RESISTERS

RESCUERS

LIBERATORS

SURVIVORS

CHILDREN

JEWS

Roma (Gypsies)

Poles and other Slavs

Political Dissidents & Clergy

Physical and Mentally handicapped

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Homosexuals

Others

JEWS

Boycotts of Jewish businesses seemed logical

Ghettos – Hitler used these to get Jewish people herded together so he could more easily transport them to the camps

Camps – concentration and death camps where most died a tragic death

ROMA - GYPSIES

Believed they were of an inferior race

did not want them to “breed” with Germans and thus weaken the Aryan race

treated them the same as Jews

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

20,000 in Germany in 1933

would not salute flag, Hitler or join the army

10,000 sent to concentration camps

2,500-5,000 died

Adolf Eichmann- SS LTC, Organized “Final Solution”, escaped after war however found and sentenced to death in 1961

Hans Frank – Nazi Governor of Poland , sent 85% of Jews to death camps, executed in 1946

Joseph Goebbels – Propaganda minister – headed the burning of Berlin and Kristallnacht, killed his family & himself

NAZI LEADERS

Herman Goring – Hitler’s successor , CIC Luftwaffe, President of Reichstag, sentenced to death, committed suicide

Heinrich Himmler- Head of SS & Gestapo, in charge of concentration and death camps

Joseph Mengele – Auschwitz physician, medical experiments , escaped to Argentina & Paraguay. He was hunted down by Israeli agents and his body was found in 1986 in Brazil.

NAZI LEADERS

Most Germans were not soldiers Most Germans were not Jews Most Germans did not die Most Germans just watched Mr. Mulford The average German citizen watched the Jewish people and others go from being boycotted, to being herded into Ghetto’s and then shipped off to concentration camps. Only at the end did they understand the full impact, and then still some could not believe the Holocaust had actually happened.

Indifference is not so much a gesture of looking away--of choosing to be passive--as it is an active disinclination to feel. Indifference shuts down the humane, and does it deliberately, with all the strength deliberateness demands. Indifference is as determined--and as forcefully muscular--as any blow. Cynthia Ozick

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the labor leaders, and I did not speak out because I was not a labor leader. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me. The Reverend Martin Niemöller, a pastor in the German Confessing Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.

Rescuers are those who, at great personal risk, actively helped members of persecuted groups, primarily Jews, during the Holocaust in defiance of Third Reich policy. They were ordinary people who became extraordinary people because they acted in accordance with their own belief systems while living in an immoral society. Thousands survived the Holocaust because of the daring of these rescuers. Although in total their number is statistically small, rescuers were all colossal people.

RESCUE STEPS First, a rescuer had to recognize that a person was endangered Next, rescuers had to decide whether or not to assume the responsibility of helping and risk the potential consequences Lastly they took action!

There are 350,000 survivors of the Holocaust alive today... There are 350,000 experts who just want to be useful with the remainder of their lives. Please listen to the words and the echoes and the ghosts. And please teach this in your schools. --Steven Spielberg, Academy Award acceptance speech

Inner Exile: Life in Hiding Life in hiding from the Nazis was a daily struggle. Those hidden lived in constant terror of being discovered. People in hiding were discovered frequently. The consequences of being found for hiders and those hiding them were grave, often resulting in brutal death at the hands of special police squads.

Exile: Flight in and through Europe Many survivors either sensed the danger awaiting them if they stayed in their hometowns across Europe, or were forced to leave their homes. For those who left, it often meant that they would see their friends and relatives for the last time. Life in exile was full of fear and uncertainty.

Death Factories and Forced Labor The chances of surviving the war in any of the Nazi death, concentration, or labor camps were slim to none. Those who did survive are the sole witnesses to the horrors put into action behind the barbed electric fences surrounding Nazi compounds. Their stories remind us of the atrocities humans are capable of when led to believe those who are different from them are sub-human or otherwise undesirable.

FACES OF THE HOLOCAUST

WALKING TO THE WARSAW GHETTO

WARSAW GHETTO

JEWS STAND IN LINE - WARSAW GHETTO

WARSAW GHETTO JEWISH POLICE

WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING CAPTIVES

CHILDREN HEADED TO DEATH CAMPS

LIBERATED JEWISH CHILDREN

CHILDREN STARVED TO DEATH

DR. MENGELE’S CHILD EXPERIMENTS

EXECUTIONS