The Holocaust: A Modern State's Systematic Murder of an Entire People

1. The Holocaust

2. “Auschwitz taught us what man is capable of doing.Hiroshima taught us what is at stake.” Victor Frankl

3. Three Questions to Consider Posed by Lucy Dawidowicz in The War Against the Jews (1975)

4. Question #1 • How was it possible for a modern state to carry out the systematic murder of an entire people for no other reason than that they were Jewish?

5. The Holocaust and Modernity • Only a modern state, with its capacity for bureaucratic organization, mass communication/propaganda, and modern technology (e.g. railroads, mass communications) could carry out murder on such a scale.

6. The Holocaust was systematic The Holocaust was centrally planned and an expression of state policy. To carry out the transport and murder of millions took significant organization and involved many government agencies and tens of thousands of workers.

7. Why the Jews? • Anti-Jewish attitudes deeply rooted in European Christian culture and society. • Jews historically charged with the crime of deicide (murder of God). • All measures taken by the Nazis against the Jews had precursors in European history (badges, ghettos, restrictive laws, etc).

8. This is a poster from the anti-Semitic movie, The Eternal Jew. It was shown in theatres throughout Germany and depicted Jews in the most appalling and stereotypical manner. Anti-Jewish Propaganda

9. The History of anti-Semitism • Early Christianity: You cannot live among us as Jews. • Middle Ages: You cannot live among us. • Holocaust: You cannot live. -Raoul Hilberg

10. The Holocaust was systematic The Nazis came to power in January 1933. The systematic murder of Jews didn’t begin until 1941. The Holocaust was preceded by government policies designed to isolate the Jews and condition the population to accept anti-Jewish policies.

11. Stages of the Holocaust • Anti-Jewish Legislation (1933-1935) • (a) Boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany (April 1, 1933) • (b) Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of rights of citizenship and barred Jews from education, professions, and public spaces (parks, pools, theatres, etc). Jews disappeared from German public life.

12. Stages of the Holocaust • Persecution (1938-39) • *Kristallnacht (November 1938) Anti-Jewish pogrom orchestrated by Nazis after murder of German diplomat by Jewish youth. • *Expulsion: Germany attempted to expel many Jews from the Reich. Few nations would accept Jewish refugees.

13. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis orchestrated an attack on Jews throughout the Reich. Synagogues and Jewish business were burned. Jews were arrested and interned. The Jewish communities had to pay for the damage to Jewish property. Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)

14. States of the Holocaust (3) Ghettoization The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 brought millions of Jews under German control in an area called the General Government. Jewish ghettos, reminiscent of the Middle Ages, were established. Jews were segregated in ghettos were they were systematically starved and exploited as slave labour.

15. A child is arrested in the Warsaw Ghetto. Ghetto Life

16. Ghetto Life (2)

17. Stages of the Holocaust (4) • The Final Solution began with the invasion of Russia in June 1941 • Nearly 2 million Jews murdered by Einsatzgruppen (“special action” units) • Method of killing (mass shooting) deemed too slow and difficult for killers

18. The Einsatzgruppen

19. Stages of the Holocaust (5) • Wannsee Conference (Jan 1942) SS leaders (under Heydrich and Eichmann) met in Berlin to confirm plans for “final solution” to the Jewish question. • Extermination camps (1941-1944) Millions of Jews killed at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

21. Death Camps

22. Auschwitz . Notice how the entrance looks like a Train Station

23. Auschwitz Complex • Auschwitz was made up of three main camps and thirty-nine sub-camps where prisoners did forced labor. • Auschwitz I had three purposes: capture Nazi enemies, create a forced labor group, and ensure Germany’s safety by getting rid of certain groups. • Auschwitz II, Birkenau, was the main death camp. • Auschwitz III, Monowitz, was a.k.a. the Labor Education Camp where prisoners were forced to work

24. Selection • Upon arrival, prisoners were either sent directly to the gas chambers or were put to forced labor. • The 10-30% chosen for labor were mostly strong men from about age eighteen to forty. • The young, old, or weak were sent to be killed.

25. Destroying Identities • After selection, prisoners stripped their clothes, and their belongings were taken to “Kanada.” • Next, all of the hair on their bodies was painfully shaved off and they were sent to take a shower. • Their left arm was tattooed with their identification number and they were given uniforms with their ID number sewn on.

26. Killing Methods • At first, the murdering was done close-range, but this left the killers traumatized, so they looked for new methods. • They began using Hell Vans, where the carbon monoxide rigged to the back would suffocate them. • The main killing methods were the gas chambers and medical experiments.

27. Hell Vans • The prisoners would be shoved into the back of a truck, and it would drive off into the woods • The exhaust fumes with carbon monoxide were hooked up to the back, and the gasses would suffocate the prisoners to death. • “We could hear the screams, but we couldn’t see the people. They were loaded in and murdered there. It was hell. That’s why we called these vans Hell Vans.” ~Zofia Szalek, witness~

28. Chambers & Crematoria • Zyklon B, the gas used in the chambers and the Nazi’s best killing method, was the pesticide used to kill lice on clothing. • The Nazis had to continue building more chambers and ovens because they underestimated their rate of killing.

29. Daily Life • Before toilets and taps were built in the barracks, the prisoners went to the bathroom in a huge hole covered by a wooden bar with holes. • When they got toilets, the prisoners were timed, and if they were in the bathrooms to long, they would be beaten. Day’s Rations at best: • Breakfast- coffee or tea • Lunch- turnip and potato soup • Dinner- bread with either sausage, cheese, butter, or jam (Shuter,15)

30. Liberation • The Nazis tried to blow up all of the gas chambers/crematoria and burn or erase all records when they heard the Soviets were coming. • They evacuated the camp and began the death marches. • When the Soviets arrived, there was still some evidence such as piles of corpses and undestroyed records. • The Soviets freed 7,600 prisoners, and the truth of the camps was out!

31. Death Marches • When the Soviets were rumored to be coming, the Nazis had to get everyone out of the camps, so they started marching. If someone • fell from being too sick or tired to march, they were immediately shot. • About 15,000 people died of starvation, being too cold, and exposure on the marches. (“Auschwitz” n.p.)

32. Outcome • The Nazis were eventually able to kill 2,000-3,000 people per hour at the camps! • There were about 1.3 million people that went into the camps, and about 1.1 million were murdered! • Out of the 1.1 million killed, 90% of them were Jews!

34. Dachau • 1938 10,000 Jews arrive • Main gate sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”

35. Dachau • Registration tags worn

36. Dachau • Jourhaus - gate • Roll-call square • Schunt room • Prisoner Baths • Main bldg. & bunker • Bunker • Camp Road • Religious Memorials • Memorials • Crematorium

37. The roll call square It was in this area that the prisoners were counted every morning & evening, & assigned to their work. Punishment measures were announced & carried out here publicly to intimidate the prisoners. As the number of prisoners increased, the roll-call procedure also became longer & more exhausting. Dead prisoners were brought to roll-call & included in the count.

38. The prisoner’s bath The baths were the last station of the admission procedure. This is where newly arrived prisoners had their heads shaved, were disinfected, showered & then sent to the barracks dressed in their prisoner clothing. Those already imprisoned came here once a week at the beginning - later less frequently - to "bathe," a procedure that according to the recollection of many survivors often involved harassment.

39. Solitary Confinement

40. Dachau

41. Dachau

42. Dachau

43. Dachau • Two crematoria • 1942 gas chamber is built • Used? • Medical experiments conducted

44. Dachau • April 29, 1945 liberated by the US 7th Army • 27,400 prisoners left alive in camp

45. Medical Experiments Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments of concentration camp inmates. They did these without consent of the victims who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in the case of many…death.

46. In 1942, Sigmund Rascher and others conducted high-altitude experiments on prisoners at Dachau. Eager to find out how best to save German pilots forced to eject at high altitude, they placed inmates into low-pressure chambers that simulated altitudes as high as 68,000 feet and monitored their physiological response as they succumbed and died. Rascher was said to dissect victims' brains while they were still alive to show that high-altitude sickness resulted from the formation of tiny air bubbles in the blood vessels of a certain part of the brain. Of 200 people subjected to these experiments, 80 died outright and the remainder were executed. High Altitude

47. To determine the most effective means for treating German pilots who had become severely chilled from ejecting into the ocean, or German soldiers who suffered extreme exposure on the Russian front, Rascher and others conducted freezing experiments at Dachau. For up to five hours at a time, they placed victims into vats of icy water, either in aviator suits or naked; they took others outside in the freezing cold and strapped them down naked. As the victims writhed in pain, foamed at the mouth, and lost consciousness, the doctors measured changes in the patients' heart rate, body temperature, muscle reflexes, and other factors. When a prisoner's internal body temperature fell to 79.7°F, the doctors tried rewarming him using hot sleeping bags, and scalding baths. Freezing

48. For the benefit of the German Army, whose frontline soldiers suffered greatly from gas gangrene, a type of progressive gangrene, doctors at the Ravensbruck concentration camp performed studies to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide and other drugs in curbing such infections. They inflicted battlefield-like wounds in victims, then infected the wounds with bacteria such as streptococcus, tetanus, and gas gangrene. The doctors aggravated the resulting infection by rubbing ground glass and wood shavings into the wound, and they tied off blood vessels on either side of the injury to simulate what would happen to an actual war wound. Victims suffered intense agony and serious injury, and some of them died as a result. Sulfanilamide

49. In an effort to find ways to more effectively multiply the German race, Dr. Josef Mengele performed experiments on twins at Auschwitz in hopes of plumbing the secrets of multiple births. After taking all the body measurements and other living data he could from selected twins, Mengele and his collaborators dispatched them with a single injection of chloroform to the heart. Twins

50. Researchers at Buchenwald concentration camp developed a method of individual execution by injecting Russian prisoners with phenol and cyanide. Experimenters also tested various poisons on the human body by secreting noxious chemicals in prisoners' food or shooting inmates with poison bullets. Victims who did not die during these experiments were killed to allow the experimenters to perform autopsies Poison