The The HolocaustHolocaust

A teaching resource created by the Birmingham Holocaust Education Committee.July 2007

www.bhamholocausteducation.org

Only after we assimilate the history of the Holocaust can we transform the future.

– Alan Rosenberg, Professor of Philosophy, Queens College

• The State sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims – 6 million were murdered.

• From the Greek word meaning “a sacrifice by burning.”

• In Hebrew the term “shoah” is used, meaning “catastrophe.”

The HolocaustThe Holocaust

Never before had a government, one that had prided itself on its own citizens’ high level of education and culture, sought to define a religious group as a race that must be eliminated throughout an entire continent, not just within a single country.

Never before had a government harnessed the immense power of technology for such destructive ends, culminating in the horror of Auschwitz – a death camp that, at its peak, “processed” 10,000 Jews a day.

Never before had a government summoned their best and brightest people to mobilize destruction and used mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) to systematically kill approximately 1.5 million individuals in 2 years.

Never before had a government sought to dehumanize a group through such a devastatingly thorough and systematic use of propaganda that included the use of film, education, public rallies, indoctrination of the youth, radio, newspapers, art and literature.

The Holocaust was Unique:

Lova Warszawczyk rides his tricycle in the garden of his home in Warsaw shortly before the

start of World War II. He survived.

Jewish Life Before the Jewish Life Before the WarWar

A group of Jewish children pose in their bathing suits while vacationing in the

resort town of Swider, near Warsaw.

The two girls on the right are Gina and Ziuta Szczecinski. Both perished during the

war.

Malka Orkin (left) and her friend Tusia Goldberg. Tusia,

whose father later became a member of the Bialystok ghetto

Jewish council, survived the war.

Malka did not survive.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Group portrait of the extended family of Mottle Leichter in Janow

Podlaski, Poland. Only 3 in the picture survived.

Jewish family celebration in Radomsko, Poland. Almost all of this town’s 12,000 Jews were deported to the death camp at Treblinka.

Victims

Bystanders (85%)

Perpetrators (< 10%)Rescuers (< 0.5%)

It is true that not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.- Elie Wiesel, 1995

Jews Political OpponentsHabitual Criminals HandicappedHomosexuals Jehovah’s

WitnessesRoma & Sinti (Gypsies)

Poles

Freemasons ImmigrantsSoviet P.O.W.’s American P.O.W.’sAfrican-Germans

The VictimsThe Victims

ExterminationExtermination

DeportationDeportation

GhettoizationGhettoization

ConfiscationConfiscation

ExclusionExclusion

IdentificationIdentification

Who was Hitler?Who was Hitler?• Born in Austria.

• Reared Catholic.

• Aspired to be an artist.Rejected by Vienna Academy of Arts on two occasions. Never attended college.

• Exposed to antisemitic influences while in Vienna.

• Moved to Germany to avoid Austrian draft.Fought for Germany in World War I.

Born in Austria

Braunau-am-Inn

Reared Catholic

Adolf (center) with schoolmates, 1900.

St. Michael’s Catholic Church attended by Hitler as a child.

Leonding, Austria

Aspired to be an ArtistRejected by Vienna Academy of

ArtsNever Attended College

Oedensplatz (Feldherrnhalle), Munich,

1914 Artist: Adolf Hitler

The Rotterdam Cathedral

Munich, 1930Artist: Adolf Hitler

Moved to Germany to avoid Austrian draft. Fought for Germany in World

War I.

Hitler served in the Bavarian contingent of the German Army.

Factors ContributingFactors Contributingto the Rise of the Nazisto the Rise of the Nazis

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for good men to do nothing.- Edmund Burke, British Philosopher, 1729-1797

• Treaty of Versailles• Economics• German Nationalism• Antisemitism

Treaty of Versailles

After World War I, the need for security on the continent led France to support a

buffer zone of new nations between Russia and Germany, carved out of the

former Austrian Empire: Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland,

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were created.

German territory along the French border was demilitarized out of the same concern

for protection.

European alliances on the eve of World War I

Europe after World War I

German territorial losses as dictated by the Treaty of Versailles.

Unemployment in Germany 1928-1933

September 1928

650,000

September 1929

1,320,000

September 1930

3,000,000

September 1931

4,350,000

September 1932

5,102,000

January 1933 6,100,000

DATEDATE GERMAN MARKSGERMAN MARKS U.S. DOLLARSU.S. DOLLARS

1919 4.2 1

1921 75 1

1922 400 1

Jan. 1923 7,000 1

July 1923 160,000 1

Aug. 1923 1,000,000 1

Nov. 1, 1923 1,300,000,000 1

Nov. 15, 1923 1,300,000,000,000 1

Nov. 16, 1923 4,200,000,000,000 1

Inflation in Germany

German children with stacks of inflated currency, virtually worthless in 1923.

Worldwide Depression, 1929

Bread lines for the unemployed in the U.S.

German Nationalism

Otto von Bismarck1871-1890

Engineered the unification of the

numerous states of Germany.

Charlemagne800-814

His vast realm encompassed what

are now France, Switzerland,

Belgium, Netherlands, half of

present-day Italy and Germany, and parts of Austria and

Spain.

Adolf Hitler1933 - 1945

1st Reich800 - 1806

2nd Reich1871 - 1918

3rd Reich1933 - ?

Hitler promised to return Germany to its previous glory

with an empire that would last 1000

years. In reality, the 3rd Reich lasted only

12 years.

AntisemitismRecognizing public support

for his anti-Jewish comments, Hitler capitalized on these anti-Jewish feelings

that had existed for centuries in the German

population and offered the Jews as a scapegoat for the country’s current financial woes. He would claim that

Germany had lost World War I because of the Jews, that democracy and communism were Jewish inventions, and that the Jews were engaged

in a conspiracy for world domination. It was the Jews who controlled society and

made Germans suffer.

Antisemitic political cartoon Antisemitic political cartoon entitled "Rothschild" by the entitled "Rothschild" by the

French caricaturist, C. Leandre, French caricaturist, C. Leandre, 1898. 1898.

Birth of the Nazi Party

Assembly of the Nazi Party, 1922, Coburg, Germany

• In 1919 Hitler joined the fledgling “German Worker’s Party.”

• In 1920 he took control of the group and changed the name to the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, NSDAP, or Nazi for short.

• It was here that Hitler discovered two remarkable talents: public speaking and inspiring personal loyalty.

German propaganda postcard showing an early Hitler preaching to the fledgling Nazi

Party.

What the Nazis What the Nazis BelievedBelieved

•What the Nazis Believed

• Racial Science • Nazi Platform• Symbols

Anyone who interprets National Socialism as merely a political movement knows almost nothing about it. It is more than a religion. It is the

determination to create the new man. - Adolf Hitler

“Second Creation”

Theodor Seuss Geisel, April 3, 1942

Racial Science

Nazi physicians conducted “bogus” medical research in an effort to identify physical

evidence of Aryan superiority & non-Aryan

inferiority. The Nazis could not find evidence for their theories of biological racial differences among human

beings.

This kit contains 29 hair samples used by doctors,

anthropologists, and geneticists to determine

racial makeup of individuals.

Establishing racial descent by measuring an ear at the Kaiser Wilhelm

Institute for Anthropology.

The law of existence requires uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live. – Adolf Hitler

Caliper to measure skull Caliper to measure skull width.width.

Nazi Platform We demand:1. A union of Germans to form a great Germany.

2. Abolition of the Treaty of Versailles.

3. Lebensraum (living space) for Germans as well as surplus populations.

4. German blood as a requirement for citizenship. No Jew can be a citizen.

5. Non-citizens live in Germany as foreigners only, subject to the law of aliens.

6. Only citizens can vote or hold public office.

7. The state insures that every citizen live decently and earn his livelihood.

8. No further immigration of non-Germans. Any non-German who arrived after August 2, 1914, shall leave immediately.

9. Revision of the national system of education with citizenship being taught.

10. All newspapers must be published in the German language by German citizens.

Symbols

Victims

Bystanders (85%)

Perpetrators (< 10%)Rescuers (< 0.5%)

Reinhard Heydrich

Joseph Goebbels

Heinrich HimmlerHermann Goering

Adolf Eichmann

Rudolf Hess

The The PerpetratorsPerpetrators

History teaches us to beware of demagogues who wrap themselves in the flagin an attempt to appeal to the worst aspects of nationalism.

- Alistair Nicholson

Crucial Divisions of Nazi Crucial Divisions of Nazi PartyParty

SA (Storm Troopers, Brown Shirts, Sturmabteilungen) – 1921

SS (Protective Squad, Schutzstaffel)

• SD (Security Service,

Sicherheitsdienst) - 1931

• Gestapo (Secret State Police, Geheime Staatspolizei) - 1933

• Death’s Head Units (Totenkopfverbande) - 1936

• Special Action Groups

(Einsatzgruppen) - 1938

• Waffen SS (Armed SS) - 1940Mass roll-call of SA and SS

troops. Nuremberg, November 11, 1935

Nazi Intentions Nazi Intentions RevealedRevealed

•Anti-Jewish Policies

•Boycott of Jewish Shops: April 1, 1933

•Nazi Book Burnings: May 10, 1933

•Nuremberg Laws: September 15, 1935

•The November Decree: November 14, 1935

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

- Lillian Hellman

Anti-Jewish Policies

Goals:• social death of Jews• removal of Jewish

presence/influence from German society

Means of Accomplishment:• verbal assaults• physical assaults• legal/administrative restrictions

How can such a monstrous crime as the Holocaust occur?It begins when people start thinking of themselves as ‘us’ and of others as

‘them’.- Ted Gottfried, Deniers of the Holocaust

Laws Restricting Civil Rights

The Law for the Protection of German Blood & German Honor forbade either marriage or sexual relations between Jews and

Germans.

Bench with inscription “Only for Jews.”

Sign on a phone booth in Munich prohibiting Jews from using the public telephone.

Sign forbidding Jews in public pool.

Laws Restricting Personal Rights

Jews were only permitted to purchase products between 3-5

p.m. This was one step in the overall Nazi scheme of eliminating

Jews from economic, social and cultural life.

Laws Restricting Education

Political Cartoon from Der Stürmer entitled: “Away with Him”The long arm of the Ministry of Education pulls a Jewish teacher from

his classroom. March 1933.

Laws Restricting Occupation

Erich Remarque,

author.

Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize winner.

Otto Klemperer, conductor.

Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst,

With the rise of Nazism, nothing the Jews had done for their country made any difference… - Alfred Gottschalk, Jewish Survivor

Laws Restricting Private Property and Business

"Aryanization" announcements in a newspaper.

Aryanization was the process of transferring Jewish businesses to German control.

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well

explained or, on occasion, “regretted,” that, unless

one were detached from the whole process from the

beginning, unless one understood what the whole

thing was in principle, what all these “little

measures” that no “patriotic German” could resent

must some day lead to, one no more saw it

developing from day to day than a farmer in his field

sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.Heinrich Hildebrandt, non-Jewish German high school teacher during the Nazi years, interviewed in 1952.

They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer

Boycott of Jewish Shops

April 1, 1933

SA soldiers stood at the entrances to Jewish shops and professional offices discouraging non-Jewish patrons from

entering.

Signs were posted warning: “Germans! Beware! Don’t Buy from Jews!”

Nazi Book BurningsMay 10, 1933

Where books are burned, in the end, people will be burned.

- Heinrich Heine (19th century German poet)

Uniformed Nazi party officials carrying confiscated books.

Hamburg, Germany,

The public burning of "un-German" books by members of the SA and university students.

Nuremberg LawsSeptember 15, 1935

Reich Flag Law• Official colors of the Nazi state are black, red, and white.

• The national flag is the swastika flag.

• Jews are forbidden from flying the German flag.

Reich Citizenship Law• German citizenship is denied to Jews. They are given the status of “subjects.”

• Jews can not vote, own property, operate a business, or be paid wages as employees.

Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor• Forbids marriage or sexual relations between Jews and Germans.

• Bans employment in Jewish homes of any German female under 45 years of age.

The November DecreeNovember 14, 1935

German:

4 “German” grandparents

Mischlinge, 2nd Degree:

1 Jewish grandparent

Mischlinge, 1st Degree: *

2 Jewish grandparents

Jew:

3+ Jewish grandparents

* 1st Degree Mischlinge would be considered Jews if they met any of the following criteria:

- practiced the Jewish religion- were married to a Jew- or were children born after

September 15, 1935 to one Jewish parent and one German parent

• The Hitler Youth• Education in Nazi Germany• Media• 1936 Olympics in Berlin

Nazi Nazi PropagandaPropagandaHow can such a monstrous crime as the Holocaust occur? It

begins when people start thinking of themselves as “us” and of others as “them”.

-Ted Gottfried, Deniers of the Holocaust

The Hitler Youth

"Youth Serves the Fuëhrer. All ten-year-

olds join the Hitler Youth."

“All girls join us.”

GIRLS German Girl’s League, Bund Deutscher Mädel

(BDM)

BOYS Hitler Youth,

Hitlerjügend (HJ)

“The Jewish Question is the Key to World History.”

Education in Nazi GermanyThe foundation of every state is the education of its youth. -

Diogenes

Werner May, Deutscher National-Katechismus 2nd edition (Breslau:

Verlag von Heinrich Handel, 1934), pp.

22-26

The German National Catechism for Young

Germans in School and on the Job:

“Which race must the National Socialist race fight against?

The Jewish race.

Why?

The goal of the Jew is to make himself the ruler of humanity. Wherever he comes, he destroys works of culture. He is not a creative spirit, rather a destructive spirit.”

The teacher begins and ends the instruction by leading the assembled

students in the greeting: The teacher raises the right arm and

declares “Heil Hitler.” The students raise their right arms

and respond Heil Hitler.”

Raising the Swastika Flag at a school in Berlin.

Typical School Day

The Poisonous Mushroom

“The Experience of Hans and Else with a Strange

Man”

“How To Tell A Jew ““How Jewish Traders Cheat” 

  “The Poisonous Mushroom”

Media-Newspaper

“Der Stürmer“, an antisemitic tabloid, was posted on billboards for all to read, under the heading: Die Juden sind unser Unglück (The Jews are our Misfortune).Völkischer

Beobachter, (“People's

Observer”), daily newspaper published

by the Nazi Party in Germany from the 1920’s until 1945.

Media-Radio

"All Germany hears the Führer on the People's Receiver." The Nazis, eager to encourage radio listenership, developed an inexpensive radio receiver to make it possible for as many as possible to hear Nazi propaganda.

Free distribution of radios in honor Free distribution of radios in honor of Joseph Goebbel’s birthday. of Joseph Goebbel’s birthday. Berlin, October 29, 1938. Berlin, October 29, 1938.

Media-Film

The Eternal Jew, the most famous Nazi propaganda film.

Jew Pests, a film aimed at influencing

audiences to hate Jews.

A propaganda film designed by Nazis

for Nazis.

1936 Olympics in Berlin

Jesse Owens' medal ceremony for the long jump.

Spectators salute Adolf Hitler during the games.

The torch lighting ceremony. German spectators spell out the phrase,

directed at Adolf Hitler, "Wir gehoeren Dir" [We belong to you].

World War II: 1939-World War II: 1939-19421942

World War II BeginsWorld War II Begins

• The Invasion of Poland: September 1, 1939

• The Blitzkrieg of Poland• The Division of Poland• The Germanization of Polish Gentiles• The Isolation of Polish Jews

Close your eyes to pity! Eighty million people (the population of Germany) must obtain what is their right! The stronger man is right!

Be harsh and remorseless! - Adolf Hitler, August 31, 1939

Germanization of Polish Gentiles

Two masters cannot exist side by side, and that is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed. -Adolf Hitler Poles with Aryan features were allowed to remain in Poland. Some Aryan-looking children were kidnapped and taken to Germany to raised as German.

Some Polish men were drafted into the German army, others were deported to the Reich for slave labor.

Monuments to Polish history and culture were destroyed.

Valuable collections of art and science were transported out of the country. Museums and libraries were demolished.

Polish press and theaters were closed. Polish cities and streets were renamed with German names.

Universities and secondary schools were closed. Education after the 4th grade was forbidden as Poles would need little education as slave laborers.

Use of the Polish language in public and private life was forbidden.

                       

                    

                       

                    A German soldier stands on a toppled Polish monument.

Krakow, Poland

Gentile Poles assembled for forced labor. June 1943

Polish boys imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire fence. Approximately 40,000 Polish children were

kidnapped and imprisoned in the camp before being transferred to Germany during "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), The children were used

as slave laborers in Germany.

Isolation of Polish Jews

1. Humiliation & Terror 2. Forced Labor 3. Expulsion 4. The Jewish Badge

German soldiers cutting the beard of a Jew.

Humiliation & Terror

Harassment of a Jewish man.

A soldier tutors two Jewish men on how to give the Nazi salute correctly.

Jewish men are forced to race against one another while riding on the backs of their fellows.

Jews forced to sweep the streets.

Jews rounded up for forced labor October, 1939

Forced Labor

Polish Exiles, 1941 Arthur Szyk

Expulsion

The Jewish Badge

The GhettosThe Ghettos• Definition: any section of a city or town in which

members of a minority group live or are restricted by economics or discrimination.

• The first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 when the Church ordered that walls be built around the Jewish Quarter.

• The word “ghetto” means “foundry” or “iron works.” In Venice, the ghetto was near a foundry that produced cannon balls.

• The establishment of ghettos was the first step in the Nazi extermination plan for the Jews of Eastern Europe. They served as assembly and collection points for Jews.

More than 800 ghettos were established by the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

Ghetto LifeGhetto Life

• Judenrat

• Arrival

• Daily Life

• Jewish Life

• Conditions

• Smuggling

• Forced Labor

• “Liquidation/Resettlement”

The horror is not in the executions. It is in the life that came before the executions. - Abba Kovner, partisan fighter from the Vilna Ghetto

Judenrat

The Judenrat members in Krakow, Poland.

Arrival

Daily Life

Nazi officer terrorizes elderly woman with a whip.

A brother feed his young sister in the Lodz Ghetto.

Jewish men remove loaves of bread from a wagon at the soup kitchen in the Kielce ghetto.

Children selling books to earn money.

Jew chopping up furniture to use as fuel.

Lodz Ghetto. The ghetto orchestra, Lodz.

Girls eating in soup kitchen,

Warsaw.

Jewish men praying in the

Krakow Ghetto.

Celebrating the beginning of the Sabbath in the Lodz Ghetto.

Jewish women baking matzos for Passover in

the Warsaw Ghetto.

Celebrating the Passover Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jewish Life

Reading the Reading the Torah.Torah.

Conditions

Food ration card.

With little food and diseases rampant in the

crowded ghettos, the living conditions

became unbearable.

Smuggling

Forced Labor

Jewish women moving human excrement, Lodz,

Poland.

Child in a ghetto factory, Kovno,

Lithuania.

Making shoes. Kovno, Lithuania.

A workshop in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jewish children making boxes in the Glubokoye

Ghetto.

Jewish women press Nazi military

uniforms in the Glubokoye Ghetto.

“Liquidation/Resettlement”

Jews are forced into a truck which is taking them to their execution.

Jews from the Lodz ghetto board trains for the death camp at

Chelmno.

Passengers in a train car. Lodz, Poland

Deportation of the elderly and sick from the Lodz Ghetto to Chelmno.

Deportations in and out of the Lodz Ghetto.

Deportation of Children from the Lodz Ghetto.

Jews from Lublin ghetto being hustled to the trains to be sent

to Sobibor death camp.

Round-ups in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jews were categorized.

Civil liberties were restricted and property confiscated.

Jews were dismissed from universities and civil service jobs.

Jewish businesses taken over.

Jews were isolated and forced to wear a star.

Jews were assembled in large cities.

Jews were deported to camps in the east.

With the invasion of each country in Western Europe, anti-Jewish policies followed patterns seen previously in Germany between

1933-1939.

Attack in the WestAttack in the West

Marched to the forest. Forced to undress.

Forced to dig their own grave.

Shot into a ditch.

Nazis executing a Jew at the edge of a mass grave.

Ukraine, January 1942

Japanese Attack Pearl Japanese Attack Pearl HarborHarborDecember 7, 1941December 7, 1941

View down “Battleship Row.”

U.S.S. Maryland and capsized U.S.S.

Oklahoma.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounded determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941

List of countries presented at the Wannsee Conference, with

the number of Jews who were to be deported to their deaths.

Almost half of these countries never came under German rule

or control.

The Evolution of DeathThe Evolution of DeathIn mid-March 1942, 75-80% of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while 20-25% had perished. Merely eleven months later, in mid-February 1943, the percentages were exactly the reverse. - Christopher R. Browning, Holocaust

historian

The first carbon monoxide experiments using cars.

A “hell” van.

Zyklon-B crystals.

DeportationsDeportations

A 1942 transport to Treblinka.

A child’s drawing showing a German soldier shooting at a

train of deportees.

Corpses lie in an open railcar at Dachau.

“Im Wagon” (In the Railway Car) by Ella Liebermann-

Shiber

Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway

Carhere in this carload

i am eve

with abel my son

if you see my other son

cain son of man …

tell him I

Types of Concentration Camps

● Labor Camps

● Prisoner of War Camps

● Transit Camps

● Extermination Extermination CampsCamps

Theresienstadt, Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. Production of Czechoslovakia. Production of

opera Brundibar. opera Brundibar. (ghetto/transit camp)(ghetto/transit camp)

Dachau, Germany. Dachau, Germany. (labor camp) (labor camp)Buchenwald, Buchenwald,

Germany. (labor Germany. (labor camp) camp)

Bergen-Belsen, Germany. Bergen-Belsen, Germany. (labor camp) (labor camp)

Drancy, France. Drancy, France. Courtyard used to Courtyard used to

round up Jews for round up Jews for deportation. (transit deportation. (transit

camp) camp)

Westerbork, Netherlands. Westerbork, Netherlands. Lighting Chanukah Lighting Chanukah

candles. (transit camp)candles. (transit camp)

Mauthausen, Austria. Mauthausen, Austria. Main Main

entrance to the camp. entrance to the camp. (labor camp)(labor camp)

Dora-Mittelbau, Germany. Dora-Mittelbau, Germany. Camouflaged Camouflaged

entrance to the entrance to the underground rocket underground rocket

factory. (labor camp) factory. (labor camp)

Neuengamme, Germany. Neuengamme, Germany. On the left is On the left is the camp brick factory. the camp brick factory. (labor (labor

camp)camp)

Ravensbruck, Ravensbruck, Germany. (labor camp Germany. (labor camp

for women) for women)

Oranienburg, Germany. Oranienburg, Germany. Political Political

prisoners in the camp prisoners in the camp yard. yard.

(POW/labor camp)(POW/labor camp)

Flossenburg, Flossenburg, Germany. The Germany. The quarry. quarry. (labor camp)(labor camp)

Selection

Women & children on the left.

Men on the right.

Those “fit” for work were registered as prisoners.

Those “unfit” for work were exterminated.

RegistrationThey will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have

to find in ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains. – Primo

Levi, Survival at Auschwitz

Political Criminal

Antisocial

Homosexual Emigrant

Jehovah’s

Witness

Registration: Camp Badges

Gypsy

Jewish Political

Jewish Crimina

l

Jewish Antisocia

l

Jewish Homosexual

Jewish Emigra

nt

F P

Political (French)

Wehrmacht

Prisoner

Political Second-

Time Offender

Penal Company

Prisoner Under Special

Surveillance

Political (Polish)

BarracksSix people slept on a plank of wood, on top of us another layer. And if one of

us had to turn, all the others had to turn because it was so narrow. One cover, no pillow, no mattress. - Alice Lok, Survivor

Roll Call

Life is not important at the roll call. Numbers are important. Numbers tally. - Salmen Gradowski, Auschwitz Survivor

Amidst a Nightmare of Crime

FoodA fortnight after my arrival, I already had the prescribed hunger, that chronic hunger unknown to free men, which makes one dream at night, and settles in

all the limbs of one’s body. - Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz

A DAY’S RATIONSA DAY’S RATIONS

Breakfast Breakfast 2 cups coffee or tea2 cups coffee or tea (often nothing (often nothing

more than more than dried leaves or bark,usually dried leaves or bark,usually birch, in hot water) birch, in hot water)

MiddayMidday 3 cups turnip and potato 3 cups turnip and potato soup , soup , a scrap of meat or Avo a scrap of meat or Avo (yeast (yeast extract) added extract) added

EveningEvening 10 oz. of bread, 10 oz. of bread, less than 1 oz. less than 1 oz. sausage sausage or or cheese, cheese, and a teaspoon of and a teaspoon of margarine and beet jammargarine and beet jam

Hunger – Stealing Bread

“Der Dieb” (The Thief )

Hunger - Looking for Food “Auf der Suche nach

Kartoffelschalen” (Looking for potato peels )

Soup Distribution “Juden bekommen

zuletzt!” (Jews are last!)

Drawings of Ella Liebermann Shiber

Buna Factory, Auschwitz III (Monowitz).

Jewish women pulling cars of quarried stones, Plaszlow, 1944.

Slave Labor

Assembly line at the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) aircraft engine factory, Allach, Germany.

Leaving for Work by David Olère. Camp inmates are marched out to

work past victims of Nazi camp discipline.

Survival

“Muselmann” German term describing prisoners who were near death due to exhaustion,

starvation or hopelessness. Prisoner throwing himself onto

an electrified fence, Mauthausen.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings. - Elie

Wiesel

Medical Experiments

Low pressure experimentation resulting in death from burst lungs.

Medical experiment at Buchenwald.

Survivor shows scar of a wound

deliberately infected with dirt, bacteria

and slivers of glass.

Immersed in freezing water at Dachau.

Extermination

Women and children awaiting the gas chambers in the “Little Wood” adjacent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II

(Birkenau).

GassingsSS camp guards with Zyklon-B canisters.

Gas chamber in Crematorium I, Auschwitz I.

The camp orchestra played to calm fears en route to the gas chambers.

The first killing center was located at Auschwitz I. It was built partially underground and housed a primitive gas chamber along with several

crematory ovens.

Note the small access lids in the roof through which Zyklon-B crystals were dropped.

Crematorium I

View of the walled entrance. April 1945.

Metal slide for placing bodies into oven.

Crematory as found at liberation.

Artwork by Jan Komski, survivor.

The Value of a Life

These shoes represent one day's collection at the peak of the gassings, about twenty-five

thousand pairs.

Rings

ResistanceResistanceThere may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

- Elie Wiesel

• Obstacles to resistance

• Jewish Resistance

• Non-Jewish Resistance

• Resistance in the Ghettos and Camps

• Partisan Activity

Obstacles to Resistance

1. Superior armed power of the Germans.

2. German tactic of “collective responsibility.”

3. Secrecy and deception of deportations.

4. Family ties and responsibilities.

5. Absence of a non-Jewish population willing to help.

Jewish ResistanceTo smuggle a loaf of bread – was to resist.

To teach in secret – was to resist.

To cry out in warning and shatter illusions – was to resist.

To rescue a Torah Scroll – was to resist.

To forge documents – was to resist.

To smuggle people across borders – was to resist.

To chronicle events and conceal the records – was to resist.

To hold out a helping hand to the needy – was to resist.

To contact those under siege and smuggle weapons – was to resist.

To fight with weapons in streets, mountains, and forests – was to resist.

To rebel in death camps – was to resist.

To rise up in ghettos, among the crumbling walls, in the most desperate revolt – was to resist.Taken from a wall on resistance at the Ghetto Fighters

House.

Non-Jewish Resistance First they came for the

Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak

out.Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade

Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.

Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not

speak out. And when they came for me, there was no

one left to speak out for me.

- Pastor Martin Niemoeller

Hans Scholl (left), Sophie Scholl (center), and Christoph Probst

(right), leaders of The White Rose resistance organization. Munich,

Germany, 1942.

Participants of the uprising at the Sobibór. concentration camp.

Execution Of Jewish resistance fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Resistance in the Ghettos and the Camps

Oneg Shabbat archives being examined in Warsaw, 1950.

Sniper during Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Jewish partisans in the Lithuanian forests.

Jewish partisans who fought in the vicinity of Vilna, Poland.

Partisan Activity

A hanged Jewish partisan with a sign: "We are partisans and have shot at German soldiers." Poland 1941 – 1944.

A Jewish partisan plants dynamite on a railroad track. Vilna, 1943 or

1944.

Yugoslav partisans with Jewish parachutists from Palestine.

Yugoslavia, 1944.

The Final Stages of The Final Stages of WarWar• Allied Invasion at Normandy: June 6, 1944

• The Allies Close In

• Death Marches

• Liberation

• Yalta (Crimea) Conference: February 4-11, 1945

• Hitler’s Last Days

• The Fall of Berlin: May 2, 1945

• Surrender in the West: May 8, 1945

• Allied Occupation and Denazification

Allied Invasion at Normandy D-Day: June 6,

1944

The war against the Jews continued as the Allies closed in on the crumbling Nazi empire. Extermination of the Jews was so efficient that by the time the Soviet army re-crossed the Polish border in 1944 and D-Day occurred on June 6, most of the approximately 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were already dead.

The Allies Close In

“Death March” by Ella Liebermann Shiber

Death Marches As the Allied armies

closed in on the Nazi concentration camps, every effort was made to conceal the crimes that had been committed.

Camps were dismantled or abandoned. In the dead of winter, prisoners were taken by train and/or foot toward the heartland of Germany with hopes of preserving the slave labor force for the Reich.

Thousands froze to death or died.

German civilians, under direction of U.S. medical officers, walk past a group of 30 Jewish women starved to death by SS troops in a 300 mile

march across Czechoslovakia.

Survivors in Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau, greet arriving U.S. troops.

Survivors eagerly pull down the Nazi eagle over entrance to the

Mauthausen.

LiberationWe are free, but how will we live our lives without our families. - Anton

Mason, Survivor

Jewish survivors at Ebensee gathered outside on the day after

liberation.

Survivor sitting outside a barrack, Bergen-Belsen, April

1945.

Survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets.

Young survivors at Buchenwald,April 1945.

CONDITIONS

Survivors in Dachau distribute bread to their comrades after

liberation.

American medical personnel at work in a typhus ward in a

hospital for survivors.

Survivors, too weak to eat solid food, suck on sugar cubes to

give them strength.

The sick are evacuated to an American field hospital.

FOOD

♦MEDICINE

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other members of the Army view the

bodies of executed prisoners. Ohrdruf, April 12, 1945.

German civilians under U.S. military escort are forced to see a wagon loaded with corpses in

Buchenwald.

Witness to the Atrocities

The "Big Three": Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt , Joseph Stalin 

Yalta (Crimea) Conference February 4 - 11,

1945

“How are we feeling today?” – a 1945 British cartoon shows Churchill,Roosevelt and Stalin as doctors, working together to heal the world.    

Roosevelt & Churchill

Hitler’s Last Days

One of the last pictures taken of Hitler in his bunker before he

committed suicide. On the left is Col. Gen. Ferdinand Schoerner

who was appointed commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht in

Hitler’s will.

In the garden outside his bunker, Hitler decorates Hitler Youth who

have been newly recruited as soldiers. After the ceremony, he returns to his

underground refuge.

The Reichstag lies in ruins as did most of Berlin.

Soviet soldiers celebrate the fall

of Berlin by hoisting the Red

Flag over the ruined Reichstag.

The Fall of BerlinMay 2, 1945

As his last significant official act, Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz to succeed him as führer.

Surrender in the West May 8, 1945

With this signature the German people and the German Armed Forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the hands of the victors … In this hour I can only

express the hope that the victor will treat them with generosity.

- General Alfred Jodl (during the signing of the unconditional surrender), Reims, France.

Move to last days??????????

General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff in the German High

Command, signs the document of unconditional German surrender on

May 7. Left is Admiral Von Friedeburg of the German Navy. Right is Major

Wilhelm Oxenius of the German General Staff.

German Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel signs a surrender document at Soviet headquarters in Berlin,

May 9, 1945. The Soviets had insisted that a second ceremonial

signing take place in Soviet-occupied Berlin.

The Final Stages of The Final Stages of WarWar• Allied Invasion at Normandy: June 6,

1944

• The Allies Close In

• Death Marches

• Liberation

• Yalta (Crimea) Conference: February 4-11, 1945

• Hitler’s Last Days

• The Fall of Berlin: May 2, 1945

• Surrender in the West: May 8, 1945

• Allied Occupation and Denazification

Allied Occupation & Denazification

The AftermathThe Aftermath

• Jewish Losses

• Displaced Persons (DP’s)

• The Nuremberg Trials Nov. 20, 1945 – Oct. 1, 1946

Poland 88% 2,900,000

Soviet Union 33% 1,000,000

Hungary 70% 550,000

Romania 35% 271,000Lithuania 90% 140,000Germany 27% 134,500

Netherlands 75% 100,000

Bohemia & Moravia 84% 78,150

France 24% 77,320

Latvia 75% 70,000Slovakia 76% 68,000

Greece 80% 60,000

Yugoslavia 72% 56,200

Austria 27% 50,000

Belgium 44% 28,900Italy 20% 7,680

Luxembourg 50% 1,950

Estonia 33% 1,500

Norway 55% 762Denmark 1.3% 60

Finland 2.8% 7

Albania 0 0

Bulgaria 0 0

Spain 0 0Sweden 0 0

Switzerland 0 0

Jewish Losses

TOTAL : 5,596,029 ** These are minimum losses as reported

by Yehuda Bauer and Robert Rozett, "Estimated Jewish Losses in the

Holocaust," in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990),

p.1799.

The estimated number of Jewish fatalities during the Holocaust is usually given between 5.1 and 6

million victims. Despite the availability of numerous scholarly works and archival sources on the subject, Holocaust related figures may never be definitely known.

Displaced Persons (DP’s)

A child lights a Hannukah menorah during a celebration in

a DP camp.

Jewish refugees in Shanghai look for names of relatives and friends who may have

survived the war.

Wedding ceremony at a DP camp.

Portraits of children in Germany holding name cards, in search of their

families. Their photographs were published in newspapers.

Nuremberg TrialsNov. 20, 1945 – Oct. 1, 1946

The defendants at Nuremberg.

Julius Streicher, Editor-in-Chief of

Der Stürmer.

Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.

Front: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm

Keitel.

Front: Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop Back: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder and Balder von Schirach.

Victims

Bystanders (85%)

Perpetrators (< 10%)Rescuers (< 0.5%)

Prisoners were forced to wear these carriers on their backs to haul stones from the quarry.

BystandersBystanders

Carrying granite boulders on wooden “backpacks” up the “stairs of death.”

Mauthausen, Austria. Mauthausen Wiener Graben Quarry

Letter of complaint from Mrs. Eleonore Gusenbauer of Ried (the village above Mauthausen),

September 1941.

Inmates of the Mauthausen concentration camp are constantly being shot at the Vienna Ditch work site. Those who are badly struck still live for some time and lie next to the dead for hours and in some cases for half a day.

My property is situated on an elevation close to the Vienna Ditch and therefore one often becomes the unwilling witness of such misdeeds. I am sickly in any case and such sights make such demands on my nerves, that I will not be able to bear it much longer.

I request that it be arranged that such inhuman deeds will cease or else be conducted out of sight.

Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstand., or Gordon J. Horwitz, In the Shadow of Death – Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen, p. 35.

Victims

Bystanders (85%)

Perpetrators (< 10%)Rescuers (< 0.5%)

RescueRescue

• What Motivated Rescuers?

•Methods of Rescue

•Governments that Rescued

It was a reign which, nearly half a century later, still challenges our understanding. Evil was rewarded and good acts were punished. Bullies

were aggrandized and the meek trampled. In this mad world, most people lost their bearings. Fear disoriented them, and self-protection blinded them. A few, however, did not lose their way. A few took their direction from their own moral compass. - Dr. Eva Fogelman, social

psychologist  

What Motivated Rescuers?

Some sympathized with the Jews.

Some were actually antisemitic, but could not sanction murder or genocide.

Some were bound to those they saved by ties of friendship and personal loyalty, while some went out of their way to help total strangers.

Some were motivated by their political beliefs or religious values.

Some felt ethically that life must be preserved in the face of death.

For some there was no choice, what they did was natural and instinctive.

Many rescuers felt they were simply acting out of elemental human decency. They later insisted that they were not heroes, that they never thought of themselves as doing anything special

or extraordinary.

Methods of Rescue

Hiding a Jew in one’s house or on one’s property.

Supplying forged ID’s or ration cards.

Finding employment.

Smuggling people from one place to another.

Providing food or clothing.

Governments that Rescued

Bulgaria

Denmark

Finland

Hungary

Italy

Vatican

United States

Danish fishermen ferry Jews to safety in neutral Sweden

during the German occupation of Denmark. 1943.

SurvivorsSurvivors

Nine of Birmingham’s Holocaust Survivors:Ilse Nathan, Max Herzel, Ruth Siegler, Jack Bass, Henry Aizenman,

Aisic Hirsch, Martin Aaron, Riva Hirsch, Max Steinmetz

Photo by Becky Seitel, “Darkness Into Life” Exhibit

The ChildrenThe Children “A Loss of Infinite

Possibility”“Listen, listen well to the tale

Of what they have seen

What they have gone through.

For you are the new spring

In the forrest of the world.”

Promise of a New Spring by Gerda Weissmann Klein, Survivor

Chaim Hersh Kirschenbaum. Both he

and his mother perished in Auschwitz.