The Holocaust was the systematic murder of approximately 6 million European Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. Led by Adolf Hitler and carried out by Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hoess, and other top Nazi leaders, Jews were killed in mass shootings and gas chambers. By the end of the war, around two-thirds of European Jews had been killed by SS men in camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The Holocaust was one of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history.

1. THE HOLOCAUST –
The Nazi Genocide
Lest We Forget…
6/16/2009 1

2. The Holocaust, an ine-xhaustive subject, involves not only the
murder
of millions of Jews, but also People of other ethnicity, and
political prisoners
from the countries that Hitler overran and annexed.
I have only skimmed the top of the genocide concerning the
Jews; bear with me
If I have left anything out or have not detailed it well.
The pictures are very graphic- most of them- so , take care …
2

3. Architects of the Holocaust
…& myriad others…
Hitler Himmler
Goebbels
Goering
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4. Killings, mass gassing of men, women and
children, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities,
medical experiments - inhuman acts were an
everyday occurrence during the Nazi genocide.
SS men left the most horrifying testimonies of the
horrors of the Holocaust during World War 2.
They were Hitler's most ruthless henchmen, men
often seen as the very personifications of evil.
These masters of death were found to be quite
psychologically normal. They were men of fine
standing, husbands who morning and night kissed
their wives, fathers who tucked their children into
bed.
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5. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews
lived in the countries of Europe that would
be occupied by Germany during the war. By
1945 two out of every three European Jews
had been killed by the SS Men. The
Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of
six million Jews.
1.5 million children were murdered during
World War 2. This figure includes more than
1.2 million Jewish children, tens of
thousands of Gypsy children and thousands
of handicapped children.
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6. 6

7. Adolf Hitler was seized by an obsession with the Jews all
his life. His very first political statement, his letter to Adolf
Gemlich on 16 September 1919, already includes a clear
declaration of his anti-Semitic position:
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8. "Rational anti-Semitism on the other hand,
must lead to a systematic legal opposition and
elimination of the special privileges that Jews hold, in
contrast to the other aliens living among us (alien's
legislation). Its final objective must unswervingly be
the removal of the Jews altogether."
On 21 January 1939 Hitler told the Czech Foreign
Minister Chvalkovsky:
"We are going to destroy the Jews ... The day of
reckoning has come."
8

9. On 31 January 1939 Hitler declared: "Today I will once
more be a prophet: If the international Jewish
financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in
plunging the nations once more into a world war, then
the result will not be the bolshevization of the
earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the
annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
9

10. On 30 January 1942 Hitler
told the crowd at the Sports
Palace in Berlin: "And we say
that the war will not end as
the Jews imagine it will,
namely with the uprooting of
the Aryans, but the result of
this war will be the complete
annihilation of the Jews."
10

11. Private diaries of Nazi propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels and
Heinrich Himmler unearthed from the secret Soviet archives show that
Adolf Hitler personally ordered the mass extermination of Jews on
December 12, 1941, during a meeting of Nazi German regional
governors in the chancellery.
As Goebbels wrote: "With regards to the Jewish Question, the Fuhrer
decided to make a clean sweep ..."
11

12. Hermann Goering
Hitler's designated successor and
commander of the Luftwaffe
12

13. Despite his protestations to the contrary at
Nuremberg, Göring was undoubtedly anti-
Semitic, though whether this would have reached the
level of genocide if he had been the sole decision-
maker, absent the influence of Hitler and Himmler, is
unclear. He occasionally intervened to shield
individual Jews from harm, sometimes in exchange for
a bribe, sometimes after a request from his wife
Emmy or his anti-Nazi brother Albert.
13

14. Despite these sporadic actions to help
individuals, Göring was unquestionably and directly
complicit in the Holocaust: he was the highest figure
in the Nazi hierarchy to issue written orders for the
"final solution of the Jewish Question", when he
issued a memo to Heydrich to organize the practical
details. Göring wrote, "submit to me as soon as
possible a general plan of the administrative material
and financial measures necessary for carrying out the
desired final solution of the Jewish question."
14

15. Heinrich Himmler
Reichsfuhrer SS
15

16. Although Hitler held the ultimate responsibility for
what became the Holocaust, it was SS Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler who essentially laid the plans and
devised the schemes that led to the killings of six
million Jews.
Himmler was head of the entire Nazi police force
including SD and the Gestapo, he was Minister of the
Interior and commander of the Waffen SS and the
Home Army. One of Hitler's most sinister
henchmen, he was also in charge of the death camps
in the East.
16

17. From a number of letters and speeches of
Heinrich Himmler it becomes clear, that he
referred to the annihilation of the Jews in
Europe - the Holocaust - as a task which he
had to carry out on the behalf of the highest
authority in the Third Reich - Adolf Hitler.
In 1941, Himmler summoned Rudolf Hoess, SS
Commandant of the largest killing center ever
created, the death camp Auschwitz. He told
him that "the Fuehrer had given the order for a
Final Solution of the Jewish Question" and that
"we, the SS, must carry out that order".
17

18. April 1943 Himmler declared :
"We have - I would say, as very
consistent National Socialists - taken
the question of blood as our starting
point. We were the first really to solve
the problem of blood by action, and in
this connection, by problem of blood,
we of course do not mean anti-
Semitism. Anti-Semitism is exactly the
same as delousing. Getting rid of lice
is not a question of ideology. It is a
matter of cleanliness."
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19. 19

20. 20

21. Joseph Goebbels
Minister of Propaganda
The Nazi Minister of Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels was a relentless Jew
hater. In his diary he wrote on February
14, 1942:
21

22. World Jewry will suffer a great catastrophe at
the same time as Bolshevism. The Fuehrer
once more expressed his determination to
clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There
must be no squeamish sentimentalism about
it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe
that has now overtaken them. Their
destruction will now go hand in hand with the
destruction of our enemies. We must hasten
this process with cold ruthlessness.
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23. Crematorium at Dachau
Dachau Concentration Camp, today
Gas chamber
23

24. Hans Frank
Governor-General of Poland
Hans Frank was one of Hitler's top lieutenants, Governor-
General of occupied Poland. He was a war criminal and a mass
murderer, who was executed in Nuremberg for his presiding
over the extermination of Poles and Jews.
24

25. December 16, 1941, Hans Frank said:
"One way or another - I will tell you quite
openly - we must finish off the Jews. The
Fuehrer put it into words once: should united
Jewry again succeed in setting off a world war,
then the blood sacrifice shall not be made only
by the peoples driven into war, but then the
Jew of Europe will have met his end ...
But what should be done with the Jews? Can
you believe that they will be accommodated in
settlements in the Ostland?
25

26. In Berlin we were told: why are you making all
this trouble? We don't want them either, not in
Ostland nor in the Reichskommissariat; liquidate
them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to
steel yourselves against all considerations of
compassion. We must destroy the Jews
wherever we find them, and wherever it is at all
possible, in order to maintain the whole
structure of the Reich ...
26

27. Rudolf Hoess
Commandant of Auschwitz
He was history's greatest mass murderer, the SS Kommandant
of the largest killing center ever created, the death camp
Auschwitz. Responsible for exterminating 2,5 million people in
World War II, he was a mild-mannered, happily married Catholic
who enjoyed normal family life with his five children despite his
view of the crematoria chimney stacks from his bedroom
window.
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28. This is Excerpts from Hoess' signed testimony given at the Post-War
Nuremberg War Crime trials:
”….Mass executions by gassing commenced during
the summer of 1941 and continued until fall 1944.
I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz until
12/1/1943 and know by reason of my continued
duties in the Inspectorate of Concentration
Camps, WVHA, that these mass executions
continued as stated above. All mass executions by
gassing took place under the direct
order, supervision, and responsibility of RSHA. I
received all orders for carrying out these mass
executions directly from RSHA.
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29. …we built our gas chamber to accommodate 2000
people at one time whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas
chambers only accommodated 200 people each.
The way we selected our victims was as follows: We
had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine
the incoming transports of prisoners.
The prisoners would be marched by one of the
doctors who would make spot decisions as they
walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent
into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the
extermination plants.
Children of tender years were invariably
exterminated since by reason of their youth they
were unable to work.
29

30. …another improvement we made over
Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims
almost always knew that they were to be
exterminated and at Auschwitz we
endeavored to fool the victims into
thinking that they were to go through a
delousing process. Of course, frequently
they realized our true intentions and we
sometimes had riots and difficulties due to
that fact.
30

31. Very frequently women would hide their children
under the clothes, but of course when we found
them we would send the children in to be
exterminated. We were required to carry out these
exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul
and nauseating stench from the continuous
burning of bodies permeated the entire area and
all of the people living in the surrounding
communities knew that exterminations were going
on at Auschwitz…”
31

32. The main gate at Auschwitz, through
which an estimated two million victims
of Nazi genocide passed
32

33. Loaded off the cattle cars onto the
platform at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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34. 34

35. Bergen-Belsen: In Memoriam From Earth to
Heaven
35

36. Bergen-Belsen survivors clinging to life ...
36

37. Horrific scenes
greeted British troops as
they entered Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp on 15
April 1945
37

38. Former SS guards are The gruesome picture of the Bergen-
made to load the bodies of Belsen concentration camp as
dead prisoners onto a discovered by British troops on April
truck for burial. 20, 1945.
17-18 April 1945
SS Women who once guarded these
victims are now forced to bury them.
38

39. Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the mouth while simultaneously
biting into a cyanide capsule. Hitler's body and that of Eva Braun (his mistress
whom he had married the day before) were put in a bomb crater, doused in
gasoline by Otto Günsche and other Führerbunker aides, and set alight as the
Red Army advanced and shelling continued.
Defying the sentence imposed by his captors,(death by hanging), Goering committed
suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged.
Himmler was scheduled to stand trial with other German leaders as a war
criminal at Nuremberg, but committed suicide in Lüneburg by potassium cyanide
capsule before interrogation could begin.
…Goebbels and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where
they killed themselves.
39

40. Memorials….
Holocaust Memorial
(Miami, Florida)
40

41. …in
Auschwitz, scu
lptures by
George Segal
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42. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany
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43. If you have been distressed by this rather mild account of the
Holocaust , I am not in the least sorry ....& those who deny
it, shame on you & those who say that it was a Jewish master
plan to get rid of handicapped Jews, you can fool yourselves
all you want, the rest of the world knows the truth.
Trinity 43