4.3 The Holocaust Essential Questions

1. 4.3 The HolocaustEssential Questions • Consider the following quote: • All Poles will disappear from the world. . . It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.” • Now answer these questions: • How are genocide and other acts of mass violence humanly possible? • What choices do people make that allow collective violence to happen?

2. Bell Ringer You are a sewer worker in a Polish city. Your wages are very meager and you can barely feed your family or five. In the summer of 1943, you and three workmates discover a group of Jewish men, women, and children hiding in the rat infested tunnels of the sewers. They had to flee there as the Nazis rounded up and murdered the last Jews in the ghettos. These people are helpless: they can’t leave the sewers for fear of discovery and have no means of obtaining food, drinking water, clean clothes or water for washing. One of the women is pregnant. They are completely at the mercy of you and your workmates. You know that helping Jews hide from the Nazis is punishable by death. You also knew that the Nazis rewarded those who betrayed Jews in hiding. What do you do?

3. Anti-Semitism Poland used to be a nation home to more than 3 million Jews Today, no more than 9 thousand live there Why? Almost all of Poland’s Jews were killed by the Nazis during WWII Nazis were anti-Semitic, meaning they had a strong hatred for the Jews

4. The Persecution Begins First Move - April 1933, Hitler orders all “non-Aryans” to be removed from government jobs Believed that the “purest race” was of Nordic descent – it was the least blended blood, thus pure

5. Why Did They Do This • The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between themselves and "inferior races." • Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were seen as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race" and therefore had to be "exterminated." • The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties throughout Europe.

6. Jews Targeted • Jews were the center of Nazi targets • Anti-Semitism – hatred for Jews, had a long history in Europe • Hitler and most Germans blamed Jews for their failure to win WWI - scapegoats • 1935 – Nuremburg Laws stripped the Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property • They had to wear a yellow star of David attached to clothing for easy ID

7. Yellow Star

8. Stars of Fear • Stars were given to any enemy of the state • Jews were not the only target • Of the 11 million killed, • 6 mil were Polish (half Jewish, the other half Christian • 200-250 thousand were physically or mentally disabled • 1.5 million were children

9. Triangle Meanings

11. Kristallnacht • Nov 9-10, 1938 – “Night of Broken Glass” • Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany • Around 100 Jews killed & 100s injured • Some 30,000 arrested, 100s of synagogues burned • After – Hitler blamed Jews for the destruction • Why did this night get its name?

13. A Flood of Jewish Refugees • Nazis tried to speed up emigration (movement out) of Jews from Germany, but they encountered difficulty • Neighboring nations would not accept the refugees • France already had 40,000 • Britain took 80,000 • Sent 30,000 to Palestine (later known as Israel)

15. Refugees to US The average Jew had little chance to get to the US, but . . . “Persons of Exceptional Merit” were brought into America (100,000 in total) Among them were Albert Einstein Most Americans were concerned though that these people would take what little jobs were left during the Great Depression

16. The Plight of the St. Louis • http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005267&MediaId=3544 • In 1939, a German ocean liner passed Miami • 740 of the 943 had US immigration papers • When the US Coast Guard found out, they sent ships to prevent any Jew from making it on US soil • The ship turned around and later, based on recorded findings, over half of the passengers were killed in concentration camps • “The cruise of the St. Louis cries to high heaven of man’s inhumanity to man”

17. Hitler’s Final Solution By 1939 about 1/4 million Jews remained in Germany, but other German countries had millions more, so . . . Hitler came up with his “Final Solution” – a policy of genocide, the deliberate and systematic killing of a race

18. How did They Do It • Originally, the Nazis used death squads, to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews • By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the Final Solution, the genocide of the Jews of Europe, and to increase the pace of the Holocaust by establishing extermination camps specifically to kill Jews. • This was an industrial method of genocide. Millions of Jews who had been confined to diseased and massively overcrowded Ghettos were transported (often by train) to "Death-camps" where some were herded into a specific location (often a gas chamber), then either gassed or shot.

19. Forced relocation • Ghettos- segregated areas in Polish cities • Concentration Camps • Prisons or labor camps • Wooden barracks • Little food • Worked dawn to dusk 7 days a week • Too weak to work- killed

20. The Ghetto’s of Poland The Nazis sealed off Jewish ghettos in Polish cities like Warsaw A ghetto is an area of a city where a minority is forced to live Jews in the ghettos rebelled, which lead to Nazi retaliation and slaughter of the Jews Then the ghettos were burned to the ground

21. Warsaw Ghetto Wall Being Built August 1940, Nazi’s ordered the building of the Warsaw ghetto for Jews to live

22. Ghetto Conditions • During the next year and a half, thousands of the Polish Jews were brought into the Ghetto • Diseases (especially typhus),and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number • Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 186 calories . . . • Compared to 1,669 calories for gentile Poles and 2,614 calories for Germans.

23. On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without any deportations, the Germans suddenly entered the Warsaw ghetto intent upon a further deportation. Within hours, some 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 others rounded up.

24. Concentration Camps In addition to the Ghettos, Germany also built six of their infamous concentration camps, or prison camps, in Poland Unimaginable fates for those inside In the end, roughly 6 million Poles had been killed in these camps (1/2 of them Jews)

25. A Look Inside Auschwitz Afterwards, their bodies were often searched for any valuable or useful materials, such as gold fillings or hair, and their remains were then buried in mass graves or burned. http://www.history.com/photos/holocaust-concentration-camps/photo2

26. The Final Stage • Germans build death camps- gas chambers • SS (security squadrons) doctors separate those who can work- those who can’t die immediately • Some are shot, hanged, poisoned or die from experiments

27. The Survivors 6 m killed in death camps Some escape with help from ordinary people Some survive concentration camps survivors forever changed by experience

28. Resistance to the Nazis First, complete the anticipation guide over resistance movements Then, we will read through the book The Cats in Krasinski Square Afterwards, we will discuss your agreement or disagreement with the statements Choose two that you feel strongly about and write me a paragraph justifying your opinion