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The Holocaust. In the bible, the Hebrew word “Shoah” connotes a sudden disaster or catastrophe. Many scholars believe that this is a more accurate term for the persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews between 1933-1945.
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In the bible, the Hebrew word “Shoah” connotes a sudden disaster or catastrophe. Many scholars believe that this is a more accurate term for the persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews between 1933-1945.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor and the persecution began in earnest. Laws were passed which removed Jews from political office, restricted the number of Jews attending public high schools and restricted Jews from owning land. • Public humiliation of Jews became Nazi policy. Here Jews scrub the sidewalk under the supervision of members of the Nazi Youth.
The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. These laws stripped Jews of their citizenship and rights. At the same time Nazi leaders put pressure on business owners to fire their Jewish employees and pressured customers to boycott Jewish stores and businesses.
Hitler stepped up the persecution of Jews by forcing Jewish business owners to sell their holdings to non-Jews. The Nazis also began confiscating Jewish property and wealth which resulted in a huge windfall for the Nazi treasury.
Along with the theft of Jewish possessions came an increase in the violence against them. This trend culminated in “Kristallnacht” or “Night of Broken Glass" on November 10-11, 1938. Hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.
The Nazis invaded and conquered Poland in September 1939. On September 21st, orders were given to establish Jewish ghettos in Poland’s large cities. Ghettos were overcrowded and rife with disease. The Germans rationed food so that the ghetto inhabitants slowly starved to death.
Adding to the misery, German soldiers rounded up people at random for deportation to death camps like Treblinka.
As Germany conquered more territory, the relocation of Jews became all but impossible. Nazi leaders met at the Wannsee Conference to discuss plans for the “Final Solution”, Nazi Germany’s plan to murder the Jews of Europe. • Documents on the left are from the Wannsee Conference. They include the numbers of Jews in each of the territories Germany has conquered. The building on the right is where the conference was held in January 1942.
Beginning in March 1942 through mid-February 1943 the Nazis murdered half of all the victims who perished in the Holocaust. Mobile killing squads were used as well as death camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Jews and others arrived in the death camps by train. Most Jews were gassed upon arrival but some were chosen to work as slave laborers.
The scope of the Nazi murder was staggering. The death camps were primarily responsible for greatest number of deaths. Belzec killed over 600,000 people in just 8 months. Auschwitz and Majdanek killed over 1 million people.
The gas chambers ceased operation in 1944 with the capture of Majdanek by Soviet forces. Between then and the end of the war in 1945, the inmates at camps along the paths of the Allied advances were forced to march for days in bitter cold toward the interior of Germany. These forced marches were known as “death marches.”
The final death toll of the Holocaust stood at over six million, nearly 2/3 of the Jewish population of Europe. Winston Churchill wrote, “There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.”
