The Holocaust was a genocide carried out by Nazi Germany against European Jews during World War II. Hitler rose to power in Germany and established a totalitarian regime. He implemented racist policies and propaganda targeting Jews. Concentration camps were established where Jews and others were imprisoned and exterminated. Extermination camps like Auschwitz were built for systematic mass killings using gas chambers. Despite overwhelming odds, some resisted like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the White Rose resistance group in Germany. The Holocaust ended as Allied forces liberated camps in 1945.

1. The Holocaust
Sean Seow 9Y2

2. Hitler’s Rise to Power
Adolf Hitler joined the DAP, Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei, which was later known as the
Nazi Party in September 1919. The party
opposed to the post-Great War democratic
government. He swiftly rose to a place of
prominence in the early years of the party.
Being the best speaker in the party, he
threatened to leave the party and not return,
if he was not made leader. He was aided by
those who shared his ideals for using violence
to achieve political objectives to recruit party
members. His book Mein Kampf helped
introduce himself to the wider world.
Hitler was appointed chancellor in
January 1933. With Germans who opposed
Nazism failing to unite against it, Hitler soon
moved into complete control.
Our Only Hope: Hitler

3. Hitler’s Education Campaign
Hitler’s education campaign started
from a young age. It intended to make
school children believe that Jews were
bad and evil, and that they should be
mistreated, so that they would grow up
hating Jews.
The Poisonous Mushroom was a
collection of 17 short stories by the
Nazi writer Ernst Hiemer, with
pictures by the Nazi artist Fips. The
purpose of the stories was to
brainwash young German children to
despise and hate the Jews. The stories
infiltrated the thoughts and beliefs of
German children.

4. Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth was a paramilitary
organization made for German children from
the age of 10-18. The members of the Hitler
Youth were indoctrinated in anti-Semitism.
On of the aims of Hitler youth was to create
loyal soldiers who would fight faithfully for the
Third Reich.
Many activities closely resembled military
training, with weapons training, assault course
circuits and basic tactics. Some cruelty by the
older boys toward the younger ones was
tolerated and even encouraged, since it was
believed this would weed out the unfit and
harden the rest.

5. Propaganda
Before World War II, Nazi propaganda strategy,
officially promulgated by the Ministry of Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda, stressed several
themes. Their goals were to establish external
enemies (countries that allegedly inflicted the Treaty
of Versailles on Germany) and internal enemies, such
as Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and Bolsheviks.
German propaganda during the war
emphasized the prowess of German arms and the
humanity German soldiers had shown to the peoples
of occupied territories. Pilots of the Allied bombing
fleets were depicted as cowardly murderers. One of
the primary sources for propaganda was a daily radio
broadcast that described the military situation on all
fronts. Nazi victories lent themselves easily to
propaganda broadcasts and were at this point difficult
to mishandle. Satires on the defeated, accounts of
attacks, and praise for the fallen all were useful for
Nazis.
The pervasive use of propaganda by the Nazis is
largely responsible for the word "propaganda" itself
acquiring its present negative connotations
Don’t Buy From The Jews

6. Map of Nazi Extermination, Concentration,
Labor and Transit Camps

7. Concentration Camps
The first Nazi concentration camps set up
in Germany were greatly expanded after
the Reichsta fire of 1933, and were
intended to hold political prisoners and
opponents of the regime.
The number of camps quadrupled between
1939 and 1942 to 300+, as slave-laborers
from across Europe, Jews, political
prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, gypsies,
the mentally ill and others were
incarcerated, generally without judicial
process.

8. Extermination Camps
Extermination camps were camps built to systematically
kill millions of people by gassing and extreme work under
starvation conditions. While there were victims from many
groups, Jews were the main targets.
Operationally, there were three types of death camp:
• (1) Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps: prisoners were
promptly killed upon arrival. Initially, the camps used carbon
monoxide gas chambers; at first, the corpses were buried,
but then incinerated atop pyres. Later, gas chambers and
crematoria were built in Treblinka and Belzec; Zyklon-B was
used in Belzec.
• (2) Concentration–extermination camps where some
prisoners were selected for slave labor, instead of immediate
death; they were kept alive as camp inmates, available to
work wherever the Nazis required. These camps — including
Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac — later were retrofitted
with Zyklon-B gas chambers and crematoria, remaining
operational until war's end in 1945.
• (3) Minor extermination camps, initially operated as prisons
and transit camps, then as extermination camps late in the
war, using portable gas-chambers and gas vans. Gas vans
were initially developed at the Chelmno extermination camp,
before being used elsewhere.
In total, about 4 million Jews were killed in these extermination
camps.

9. Resistance: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Germans ordered the Jewish “police” in the Warsaw ghetto to round
up people for deportation. Approximately 300,000 men, women, and children
were packed in cattle cars and transported to the Treblinka death camp
where they were murdered. This left a Jewish population of between 55,000
and 60,000 in the ghetto.
In January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as
they tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation.
Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the
ghetto. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the
ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.
The ghetto fighters were warned of the timing of the final deportation and
the entire Jewish population went into hiding. On the morning of April 19,
1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police
entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants.

10. Resistance: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
After the Germans were forced to withdraw from the
ghetto, they returned with more and more firepower. The
German commander, General Jürgen Stroop, ordered the
ghetto burned to the ground building by building after
seven days without quelling the uprising. Still, the Jews held
out against the overwhelming force for 27 days. On May 8,
the headquarters bunker of the ZOB at 18 Mila Street was
captured. Mordecai Anielewicz and a large number of his
colleagues were killed in the fighting, but several dozen
fighters escaped through the sewers.
On May 16, Stroop announced the fighting was over.
He said his forces had captured 56,065 Jews and announced
that he was going to blow up the Great Synagogue on
Tlomack as a symbol of victory and of the fact that “the
Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists.”
Approximately 300 Germans and 7,000 Jews were
killed in the uprising, and another 7,000 Jews were
deported to Treblinka. The outcome was preordained, but
the dramatic act of resistance helped raise the morale of
Jews everywhere, if only briefly.
The valiant display of courage shown by the 750 Jews
who defended the rest of the camp cannot go unnoticed.
They showedsuch courage against overwhelming odds.

11. Resistance: Youth Opposition in Nazi
Germany
The Jews were not the
only people who resisted
the Nazi rule. Several
resistance groups within
Germany itself formed,
mainly made up of young
Germans. Groups such as
Swing Youth and more
notably White Rose (Right).

12. Resistance: White Rose
In the 1930s, teenagers Han and Sophie Scholl were like other Germans their age, and
they enthusiastically joined the Hitler Youth. Their father on the other hand, believed that
Hitler was “God’s scourge on mankind”. Later, the Scholl siblings also came to the
realization that “Hitler and the Nazis were enslaving and destroying the German people.
One day in 1942, copies of a leaflet entitled “The White Rose” suddenly appeared at
the University of Munich. The leaflet contained an anonymous essay that said that the Nazi
system had slowly imprisoned the German people and was now destroying them. The Nazi
regime had turned evil. It was time, the essay said, for Germans to rise up and resist the
tyranny of their own government. At the bottom of the essay, the following request
appeared: “Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.” This
essay had been written by Hans and his friends.
There were six different leaflets in total produced by the group. But they did not limit
themselves down to leaflets. Graffiti started to appear on walls condemning Hitler.
On the February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie were caught leaving pamphlets at the
University of Munich and were arrested. A search disclosed evidence of one of their friends,
Christoph Probst's participation, and he too was soon arrested. The three of them were
indicted for treason. They were sentenced to death, along with the rest of The White Rose.
The courage displayed by The White Rose is surely commendable.

13. The End of the Holocaust
In the final months of the war, SS guards moved
camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often
called “death marches,” in an attempt to prevent the
Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As
Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of
offensives against Germany, they began to encounter
and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as
prisoners en route by forced march from one camp
to another. The marches continued until May 7,
1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered
unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies,
World War II officially ended in Europe on the next
day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced
their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the
survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP)
camps administered by the Allied powers.

14. Not the First time… Or the Last
The Holocaust was a horrific moment in
human history. 5-11 million Jews’ lives
were ended because of a single group of
people. Though it was the most renown
example, it was not the first or last time
genocide was committed.
• Armenian Genocide: 600 000-1 800
000 deaths
• Rwandan Genocide: 500 000-1 000
000 deaths
• Cambodian Genocide: About 156 000
deaths

15. Conclusion
“Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
It is essential man does not repeat its mistakes
from the past. Things like the Holocaust is why
studying history is essential: so man does not
make such grave mistakes again.