The Holocaust: Pt. 2Concentration Camps

Between 1939 and 1945 six million Jews

were murdered, along with

hundreds of thousands of

Gypsies, Lesbian/

Gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses,

disabled and the mentally

ill.

Why? Anti–Semitism: This

is the term given to racist persecution of Jews. The Holocaust

was an anti-Semetic act.

Hitler wanted to preserve the “Aryan

Race.”

Anti-Semitism (Nuremberg Laws)

• Once in power, Hitler and the Nazi party began their persecution of the Jews.

• Jews were banned from government jobs, as well as jobs in teaching, broadcasting, newspapers and entertainment.

• Jews were not allowed to marry non-Jews. (eugenics!)• Jews were also banned from many shops and public buildings.• By 1936, many Jews found that it was impossible to earn a living.• Those who could leave Germany did. Anne Frank and Albert Einstein are

among these people.

Propaganda:Posters were used to convince Germans

that the Jews were a threat to their existence and create anti-Semetic

feelings.

This poster shows that the Jewish people, represented by the

octopus, have a strangle hold on the world.

This is an illustration from a children's book. The headlines say "Jews are our

misfortune" and "How the Jew cheats." Germany, 1936.

“Kristallnacht” or “the Night of Broken Glass”

• In November, 1938, before the war had started, a German Embassy official was shot by a Jew. Already launching his anti-Semetic propaganda, a brutal attack on German Jews followed.

• 7000 Jewish shops were looted and 20,000 Jews were arrested.

• Many were beaten savagely.

• A huge fine was also forced on the Jewish population.

The Ghettos

• Prior to the outbreak of the war, Hitler began a systematic rounding up of Jewish people.

• He had them confined to ghettos and concentrations camps.

• Ghettos were isolated areas in the city where Jews were confined and place under heavy guard.

• Many of the Ghettos were overcrowded. Several families

were living in the same quarters.

Anne Frank:

•"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to

Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places

where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio

says they're being gassed."- October 9, 1942

Ghettos were sealed off by walls constructed by Jewish inmates. Armed guards would watch to make sure that

Jews did not leave the ghetto.

Healthy Jews living in the ghettos were selected for work detail; like clearing snow from the streets.

The Jews living in the ghettos were eventually transported to the newly constructed death camps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tGwjwK9pIM

A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS

Canada and the Holocaust

• Some Jews could afford to leave Europe before the war broke out.

• In June 1939, the liner St. Louis arrived off Canada’s east coast carrying 907 Jews.

• These refugees were already denied entry into Cuba, Latin America, and the United States.

• Canadian immigration officials refused to allow the passengers to enter Canada.

• The ship returned to Europe where they found a home in the Netherlands.

• However, many of these Jews died in Concentration camps when Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940.

• Only 4,000 Jews were allowed to enter Canada. The U.S. took in 240,000 and Britain took in 85,000 Jews

The Nazi Death Camps

• Months before the end of the war, the Allies began to make horrifying discoveries.

• They found the concentration camps.

• Most prisoners were Jewish, others were political prisoners who spoke out against the Nazis.

• In 1942, the Germans developed a plan called the “Final Solution”. Every Jewish man, woman and child would be transported to

concentration camps and exterminated.

• Hitler believed this would solve the “Jewish problem.”

• At Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen Jews were tortured, hanged, shot, gassed and worked to death.

Jews were transported in crowded cattle cars.

Jews arriving at the camps were examined, registered, tattooed

and sorted.

Camps were protected with electric fences, barbed wire, moats and guard towers. Guard dogs also kept watch over

prisoners.

• Jewish Women, some holding infants are forced to wait in a line before their execution by German and Ukranian collaborators.

After the Mass Execution

• German officials walk through the bodies, making sure everyone is dead.

In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces. This was the task of Soviet POWs.

"I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway. I'll just let matters take their course and concentrate on studying and hope that everything will be all right in the end."

•- February 3, 1944

Before poison gas was used , Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans. Carbon monoxide gas from the engine’s exhaust was fed into the sealed rear compartment. Victims were dead by the time they reached the burial site.

-Anne Frank

The different death camps:Dachau: “Arbeit Macht Frei”

means “Freedom Through Work”

The iron sculpture symbolizes bodies being electrocuted on an electric

fence. The prisoners are committing suicide rather than face the horrors

of the camp

Auschwitz- Poland

• First constructed to hold Polish political prisoners

• The first extermination occurred in September, 1941

• This eventually became the main site for the “Final Solution”

BERGEN BELSEN

• Upon liberation by the British, the soldiers came upon a gruesome scene.

• 13,000 corpses were piled in a mass grave.

• They died of Typhus and starvation as well as execution.

• The people of the nearby town were forced to witness the following scene and then properly bury them.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/holocaust/5115.shtml

Living Conditions

Fumigation chamber to kill lice

Punishment

Torture Rack: prisoners put their feet under the bar in front and lay on their stomach to be whipped repeatedly.

The far wall is where executions repeatedly took place.

“Shower Room” (gas chamber)Some vents pump in gas while others put in fresh oxygen to

ventilate room enough to remove dead bodies.

There were also “Crematorium Ovens:”• Large ovens hold 2 – 3 people.• Smaller ovens hold 1 – 2

people.• Oven temperatures reach 2500

degrees C. to burn bones as well as flesh.

• At times these ovens ran up to 24 hours a day to dispose of the bodies.

THE AFTERMATH:

• The Allies found thousands of survivors suffering from starvation and disease.

• Many Jewish survivors refused to return to their former homes because of anti-semitism that persisted in Europe.

• July 1946, Kielce Poland: 150 Jews returned and were greeted by rioters who killed 41 and wounded 50 more.

• The U.S. still restricted the number of Jews who could immigrate to 80,000.

• Britain restricted Jewish immigration to their ‘colony’ Palestine.

• 250,000 Jews left for Palestine, but not all were there ‘legally’.

• The ship ‘Exodus’ with 4,500 was sent back to Germany by the British.

Footage Taken by Allied Liberators

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joWT9RGKYo4

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0G3mTRh9ro&safety_mode=true

The Aftermath:

• Eventually, after the war was over, several Jews began speaking out about their experiences.

• This added to the shame of Germany after the war

• In addition to works like the diary of Anne Frank being published, many created artwork.

• For example, David Olere was a Jew born in Poland in 1902. He was captured and sent to Auschwtiz. He was registered as prisoner 106144.

• Olère began to draw at Auschwitz during the last days of the camp, when the SS became less attentive. His works document the camp very well.

Their Last Steps

1946, three people supporting one another as they take their last steps

towards the gas chambers.

What adjectives describe the physical condition of

these men? How has the artist

suggested their loyalty to one another?

Punished in the Bunker

He uses something like an x-ray technique to show us the cramped quarters in which prison inmates were often forced to spend long periods of time. The cell

was so narrow that Olère was unable to sit, stretch or lie down for the 48 hours of his punishment.

What detail tells you this is a self-portrait?

Even though we can see through the walls of the bunker here, we cannot see into the prisoner's mind. He seems quite passive, almost like a sleeping man or a corpse. What do you suppose his thoughts are?

Discussion:

Based on what you have learned in the past few days, do you believe that the government should have the right to

secrecy within its own country?

Is Germany as a country to blame for the Holocaust? Why or why not?

Nuremberg Trials

• In the city of Nuremberg after the Second World War, a series of military tribunals were held by the Allies to prosecute the prominent members of leadership in Nazi Germany

• The first of the trials took place from November 1945 to October 1946. 23 of Germany’s most important political and military leaders were tried as war criminals• The most important target was said to be Hermann Goring, the highest

official left after Hitler’s death

Charges & Sentences

• The indictments were for:• Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the

accomplishment of a crime against peace• Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other

crimes against peace• War Crimes• Crimes against humanity

• Sentences: Most of these men were found guilty and either sentenced to life imprisonment or death• Hermann Goring was sentenced to death