Destruction and Silence: A Short Study of the Holocaust

1. Destruction and Silence: A Short Study of the Holocaust Created by: Cory Brant Warnick Patrick Henry High School Ashland, VA 22 May 2003

2. When the violently anti-Semitic National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) took power in 1933, it did not initially intend to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Its members did, however, wish to separate Germans from Jews and others, believing that the German race was in danger of being destroyed by “biologically inferior” peoples. On the Nazis’ categorized list of inferior or politically dangerous peoples: • Jews • Jehovah’s Witnesses • Gypsies (Roma) • Homosexuals • Communists and Socialists • Poles and other ethnic groups • Mentally and physically disabled people

3. Some people were forced to wear patches of various shapes identifying them according to race, religion, or politics. Political Prisoner Jehovah’s Witness Jew

4. The horizontal categories list markings for the following types of prisoners: political, professional criminal, emigrant, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexual, Germans shy of work, and other nationalities shy of work. The vertical categories begin with the basic colors, and then show those for repeat offenders, prisoners in punishment kommandos, Jews, Jews who have violated racial laws by having sexual relations with Aryans, and Aryans who violated racial laws by having sexual relations with Jews.The remaining symbols give examples of marking patterns. (Caption courtesy of the USHMM website.)

5. Gypsies at Bergen-Belsen Hadamar Institute: Discreet location of euthanasia executions 1940-1945. Then, during the mid-1930s the Nazi regime began to arrest some of the targeted people, especially communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and send them to concentration camps. Some were executed at the camps immediately, but the majority did forced labor. Disabled people and the insane were quietly executed through the Nazi “euthanasia” program.

6. Center and bottom left: Non-Jewish German residents watch as synagogues burn. They do not try to put out the flames. Bottom right: Broken stained glass in a synagogue after Kristallnacht. In November of 1938, a Jewish nationalist assassinated a Nazi official in Paris. In retaliation, the Nazi Party instigated Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”), a night in which rioters burned or vandalized thousands of Jewish synagogues, temples, businesses, and homes, and killed about 91 Jews.

7. By 1939, thousands of Jews and others were being sent to ghettos or concentration camps, or were being deported. Life in the ghettos and concentration camps was harsh and crowded, and the people suffered from hunger, disease, and violence. Above: Arrival at the Kovno ghetto (Lithuania). Top right: Life in the Kovno ghetto. Bottom right: A deportation action at Kovno.

8. Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.

9. Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.

10. German soldiers of the Waffen-SS and the Reich Labor Service look on as a member of an Einsatzgruppe prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling on the edge of a mass grave filled with corpses. (Caption courtesy of USHMM website.) Meanwhile, Jews found behind the lines during the German invasion of Eastern European countries (1939-1942) and the USSR were executed wholesale by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile death squads).

11. Women and children were not excluded from the killing actions. Top left: Jewish children are led to their execution on a beach in Liepaja, Latvia. Top right: Jewish women await execution by firing squad on the lip of a mass grave at Liepaja. Bottom left: Mania Halef, 5 years old, one of over 30,000 people killed in the 1939 mass execution at Babi Yar, near Kiev, Ukraine. Bottom right: Anna Glinberg, 3 years old, executed at Babi Yar.

12. Between July 1941 and January 1942, Nazi leaders Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann decided to implement a plan called the Final Solution, which was intended to solve the problem of having millions of Jews within new Nazi-held territories. Their solution was to kill all European Jews. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was responsible for running the concentration camps and killing centers. The Führer, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Third Reich and the National Socialists (Nazis), formulated the idea to eliminate Jews from Europe.

13. SS-Brigadeführer Reinhard Heydrich oversaw Einsatzgruppen activities and the carrying out of Reich anti-Jewish policy. Other organizers of the Final Solution Generalfeldmarschall Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe and original successor to Hitler, organized the Gestapo and the first concentration camps. SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, organized the deportation of over 3 million Jews to the concentration and death camps.

14. Belzec Chelmno Sobibor By 1942, hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to the six killing centers at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Majdanek (in 1943). Between 1942 and 1945, millions sent there were killed by bullets, gas vans, or gas chambers. Treblinka Majdanek Auschwitz-Birkenau

15. Map courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.

16. Chelmno and Sobibor Sign for the train station at Sobibor. A group of Jewish men at the Chelmno death camp await execution in a gas van.

17. Majdanek A mound of victims' shoes found in Majdanek after the liberation. Prisoners doing forced labor at Majdanek.

18. Treblinka Jews captured by the SS during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising march past the St. Zofia hospital, through the intersection of Nowolipie and Zelasna Streets, towards the Umschlagplatz for deportation to Treblinka. (Caption courtesy of the USHMM website.)

19. Belzec Close-up of a Gypsy couple sitting in an open area in the Belzec concentration camp.

20. Auschwitz-Birkenau View of the entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). The words, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” over the gate translate to,“Work will set you free.”

21. Auschwitz-Birkenau Corpses of Auschwitz prisoners in block 11 of the main camp (Auschwitz I), as discovered by Soviet war crimes investigators. (Caption courtesy of the USHMM website.)

22. By 1942, the camps disposed of most of the bodies daily by cremation in ovens or large pits. Two crematory ovens at Dachau

23. Despite the victims hopeless situation, there was resistance against the Nazis. In 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (Poland) rose up against the SS soldiers who had been sent to gather them for deportation to concentration camps. Three members of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw (Left to right): Benjamin Miedzyrzecki, Feigele Peltel, and Tuwia Borzykowski. These people risked their lives to feed or to arm Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto.

24. Led by Mordechai Anielewicz, the resistance in Warsaw continued for 20 days, until Anielewicz was killed. It took 1,200 SS soldiers to suppress the uprising, and 56,000 Jews were captured or killed. They were sent to Treblinka and other camps where most of them were executed. A Jewish fighter from the Warsaw resistance emerges from his hiding place.

25. Bottom left: Captured survivors of the Warsaw uprising are forced to march to the gathering point for deportation to Treblinka. Bottom right: A group of future Jewish fighters. Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of the Warsaw Uprising can be seen standing on the right in the photo. Top right: A captured Jewish resistance fighter is searched by an SS soldier.

26. Many uprisings occurred at camps such as Sobibor and at ghettos other than Warsaw, but all were brutally suppressed, and the Jewish fighters were almost always executed wholesale once captured. Some Jews escaped to fight in partisan resistance units in the forests of Eastern Europe, where they fought a bitter, take-no-prisoners type of war against SS and Wehrmacht troops. Though noble, resistance among the camps and ghettos was not common and did not change the fate of the prisoners in the extermination camps. Group portrait of members of the Kalinin Jewish partisan unit (Bielski group) on guard duty at an airstrip in the Naliboki Forest. (Caption courtesy of USHMM)

27. The killing in the camps and ghettos continued until 1945, when American, Canadian, British, and Soviet troops began discovering and liberating the former ghettos, camps, and killing centers. American soldiers enter Buchenwald concentration camp (Germany).

28. The condition of the starved and murdered prisoners they found was so horrific that many battle-hardened veterans were overwhelmed. Some troops vomited, and some wept. A corpse at Dachau (Germany) Survivors at Ebensee (Austria) None of the troops were left unaffected by what they saw.

29. American soldiers shoot captured SS camp guards along a wall at Dachau, April 1945. American units executed many captured SS camp guards on the spot. Local citizens were forced to view the dead or to exhume and rebury them, while surviving camp prisoners were given food and medical attention.

30. American troops force German civilians near Buchenwald to view stacks of camp victims’ bodies, May 1945.

31. U.S. soldiers force Hitler Youth members to view bodies of Dachau victims in boxcars, April 1945

32. The Allies arrested thousands of former Nazi leaders and soldiers, and put hundreds on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plascow work camp. Sadistic and brutal, he personally killed scores of prisoners. The Polish government tried and executed him in 1946.

33. The most famous of the war crimes trials was the one held in Nuremberg, Germany from 1945 to 1947, where several top Nazi leaders were sentenced to life in prison or to death. The world finally saw the horrors that the Nazis had carried out against Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, communists, socialists, mentally and physically disabled people, and Gypsies. Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945. The former Nazis on trial are on the far left, where they are guarded by Allied soldiers in white helmets.

34. With the death toll at nearly 6.5 million, the Holocaust became the world’s largest and most devastating example of genocide. Survivors and historians wish to remember and to understand the Holocaust in hopes that nothing like it will ever happen again.

35. The initial inspiration for this presentation is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website. Its collection of photographs and electronically duplicated documents is extensive and superior. The creator of this presentation made liberal use of the USHMM photographic archive with permissions. Any use of documents not owned by the USHMM or in the public domain is unintentional. A special thanks to Ms. Frances Joyner for looking over this presentation and giving editing advice. Also, a thanks must go to Professor Joseph Bendersky of Virginia Commonwealth University, whose courses in German history and whose knowledge of the Holocaust also inspired me to create this presentation. Finally, assistance given by Leslie Swift of the USHMM is greatly appreciated. However, any errors in this presentation are, of course, the sole responsibility of the creator of the presentation. Cory Brant Warnick Patrick Henry High School Ashland, VA 22 May 2003