History - WWII - The Holocaust

1. The Holocaust and Nazi
Germany

2. - There were over 44,000 camps
across Europe.
- Established from 1933-1945.
- 6 million Jewish people were
murdered, along with approx. 5
million POW’s.
- Others were murdered during the
Holocaust, leading to over 30 million
killed in total.
Facts

3. - It was an act of genocide intended to wipe out European Jews.
- The mass murder of Jewish people began in 1941.
- When the Nazis invaded Poland and the Soviet Union, they killed anyone
who resisted, but all Jewish people were singled out for execution.
What was the Holocaust?

4. - In 1941 Hitler decided that the ‘final solution to the Jewish problem’ would be
mass extermination.
- Auschwitz concentration camp was ordered to prepare for mass gassings.
- On 20 January 1942 an SS document called Final Solution to the European Jewish
Question stated that healthy Jews would be exterminated through slave labour.
Holocaust

5. - Throughout the remainder of the war, Jewish people from all over Nazi-
controlled Europe were transported to death camps.
- The sick, young children and elderly people were immediately forced into gas
chambers disguised as showers.
- Others who were fit were selected for slave labour and killed later when they
became too weak to work.
Holocaust
Inside one of the gas chambers at
Auschwitz.

6. Anti-semitism: Fear and hatred of Jews existed before WWII.
Nuremberg Laws: Stripped jews of their German Citizenship.
Why Jewish people?
Hitler didn’t like that they acted as a community and accused them
of having socialist values. He also blamed them for Germany’s defeat
in WWI.

8. Gypsies: said they were an inferior race.
Freemasons: Whom the Nazis charged as supporters of the Jewish
Conspiracy.
Jehovah’s witnesses: who refused to join the army or salute Hitler.
Unfit Germans: Homosexuals, intellectually disabled, mentally ill, physically
disabled, and incurably ill.
Other persecuted groups

9. Germany

10. Poland

11. - It was the largest and deadliest Nazi
concentration camp.
- Auschwitz was established in 1940 in Poland.
- Between 1940 and 1945, it grew to include three
main camp centers and a slew of subcamps —
each of which were used for forced labor, torture,
and mass killing.
Auschwitz-Birkenau

12. - An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz during its five-
year operation, and approximately 1.1 million were killed.
- The terror of Auschwitz finally subsided on January 27, 1945, when the
Soviet Army liberated the remaining 7,000 prisoners from the camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau

13. Women in the barracks at Auschwitz, Poland, January 1945.

14. An ariel picture taken of Auschwitz barracks taken on
December 15, 2019 in Oswiecim, Poland.

15. Forty-four subcamps with different specialisations were established at Auschwitz
between 1942 and 1944.
The Nazis made prisoners work on large farms, in coal mines, in weapons production —
basically anything the German military needed for war.
Used for labour
A photo of women deemedfit forwork at Auschwitz, 1944.

16. - Was the term used before ‘master race’ became the primary focus.
- Meant the Germans were looking to create ‘purebred’ people.
- Racial hygiene meant cleansing the world of dirty people. (Jewish people, people
with brown eyes, the mentally and physically disabled).
Used for ‘Racial Hygiene’

17. - Doctors ran experiments on how to change people's biology so
they were clean.
- Blonde hair, blue eyes was the ideal look and what Hitler wanted
for his ‘master race’.
- Many doctors used people kept in concentrations camps during the
Holocaust to conduct experiments.
- These experiments were believed to be the beginning science of
how to create the Aryan Race.
Used for ‘Racial Hygiene’

18. - Known as ‘The Angel of Death’.
- He conducted medical experiments on
prisoners.
- Mengele experimented on live prisoners,
including exposing around 3,000 children at
Auschwitz-Birkenau to disease, disfigurement
and torture.
Josef Mengele

19. - He sometimes played psychological games
with prisoners by ‘hiring’ them to assist him.
- He injecting thousands of prisoners with many
substances including: petrol, ink in the eyes,
and chloroform to the heart.
- He did this to study the effects on the body.
- He also destroyed women’s organs with acid
and experimented on people with cleft
palates.
Josef Mengele

20. - He conducted horrific experiments on
up to 3,000 sets of twins, many of them
children.
- At the time, identical twins were widely
seen as the clue to understanding
genetics.
Twins

21. - Mengele used one twin as a control person and subjected
the other to blood transfusions, forced injections of
diseases, amputations, and murder.
- Those that died were dissected and studied; their surviving
twins killed and subjected to the same.
- Only 200 of the 3,000 twins subjected to medical
experiments at Auschwitz survived.
Twins