IGCSE REVISION - GERMANY: PERSECUTION

1. DEPTH STUDY
REVISION GERMANY
PERSECUTION
11

2. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – DEPTH STUDY: GERMANY – MR. D
INTRODUCTION
• The Holocaust was the persecution and mass murder of Jewish
people by the Nazis.

3. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – DEPTH STUDY: GERMANY – MR. D
ARYAN SUPER-RACE
• The Nazis believed Aryans (whites) were the “master race” and
people of other ethnicities, like Jewish or Slavic people, were inferior.
• The Nazis blamed Jewish people for problems in German society.
• The Nazis wanted a German population of only “pure” Aryan people
who fitted their ideal. They wanted to eliminate people who were
disabled, homosexual, held different beliefs, or weren’t Aryan.
• Hitler was angry when an African-American called Jesse Owens took
4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and when the German
World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Max Schmeling was beaten by
another African American, Joe Louis.

4. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – DEPTH STUDY: GERMANY – MR. D
PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS INCREASED
• In 1935 Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws.
• These laws stopped Jews being German citizens.
• They banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews in Germany.
• The banned sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews.
Kristallnacht 1938 – the Night of Broken Glass.
• A Jew murdered a German diplomat in Paris in November 1938.
• There was rioting throughout Germany – thousands of Jewish shops
were smashed, and thousands of Jews were arrested.

5. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – DEPTH STUDY: GERMANY – MR. D
JEWISH PEOPLE WERE MOVED TO
GHETTOS
• After the invasion of Poland and Russia more Jews came under Nazi
control.
• From 1940, Jewish people were forced to move into ghettos –
separate districts of cities which were usually walled in and policed by
armed guards. The largest was in Warsaw.
• Conditions in the ghettos were terrible.
• Starvation and disease killed thousands. A rebellion in the Warsaw
ghetto in 1943 was ruthlessly put down.
• When Russia was invaded in 1941, soldiers followed with orders to kill
every Jew they came across in the occupied towns and villages.

6. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – DEPTH STUDY: GERMANY – MR. D
THE NAZIS BEGAN THE FINAL SOLUTION
1942
• The Final Solution was the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jewish people.
• Death camps were built in Eastern Europe. Gas chambers were built
for mass murder.
• Mainly Jewish people were killed, but other groups were targeted as
well, for example Slavs (Russians and Poles), Roma, black people,
homosexuals, disabled people and communists.
• Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was in overall charge of this “final
solution”.
• Some death camps were: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno,
Belzec. By the end of the war, 6 million Jewish people had been killed
by the Nazis.