Jewish Persecution Nazi persecution 1941-1945

1. Jewish Persecution Nazi persecution 1941-1945

2. The Holocaust the genocideof approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany… 2/3 of entire European Jewish population died

3. The Nuremberg Laws anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and anti-Semitism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews.

4. Moved by the understanding that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

5. Section 1 Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad. Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.

6. Section 2 Extramarital sexual intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of Germany or related blood is forbidden. Section 3 Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens under the age of 45, of German or kindred blood, as domestic workers.

7. Section 4 Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colors. On the other hand they are permitted to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right is protected by the State.

8. Section 5 1.A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labor. • A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonmentor with hard labor. • 3.A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine, or with one of these penalties.

9. People defined as Jews were barred from employment as lawyers, doctors or journalists. Jews were prohibited from using state hospitals and could not be educated by the state past the age of 14. Public parks, libraries and beaches were closed to Jews. War memorials were to have Jewish names expunged. Even the lottery could not award winnings to Jews.

10. The Yellow Badge a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with anti-Semitism.

11. Extermination Camps The formal mass-killing method at an extermination camp was poison gas… besides gas chambers, the camp guards continued killing prisoners via mass shooting, starvation, torture, etc.

12. Operationally, there were three types of death camps: (1) Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps: Treblinka, Sobibór, Belzec, where prisoners were promptly killed upon arrival. Initially, the camps used carbon monoxide gas chambers; at first, the corpses were buried, but then incinerated atop pyres. Later, gas chambers and crematoria were built in Treblinka and Belzec; Zyklon-B was used in Belzec.

13. (2) Concentration–extermination camps where some prisoners were selected for slave labor, instead of immediate death; they were kept alive as camp inmates, available to work wherever the Nazis required. These camps — including Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac — later were retrofitted with Zyklon-Bgas chambers and crematoria (burning them alive), remaining operational until war's end in 1945

14. Minor extermination camps such as Sajmiste in Serbia, MalyTrostenets in the USSR, Janowska, in Poland, and Gornija Rijeka, initially operated as prisons and transit camps, then as extermination camps late in the war.

16. The Final Solution (German: Die Endlösung) was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II

17. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler Himmler was the main architect of the Holocaust, using elements of mysticism and a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims. He coordinated the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to liveor simply "in the way", including homosexuals, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses

18. Reinhardt Tristan EugenHeydrich Although ultimate responsibility for the Holocaust falls on Adolf Hitlerand Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich was one of the main architects of the Holocaust during the early years of the war; only answering to, and taking orders from Hitler and Himmler in all matters that pertained to the deportation, imprisonment, and extermination of Jews. "Under suitable direction, the Jews should be brought to the East in the course of the Final Solution, for use as labor. In large labor gangs, with the sexes separated, the Jews capable of work will be transported to those areas and set to road-building, in the course of which, without doubt, a large part of them ("eingroßteil") will fall away through natural losses. The surviving remnant, surely those with the greatest powers of resistance, will be given special treatment, since, if freed, they would constitute the germinal cell for the re-creation of Jewry.“ – Heydrich

19. Karl Adolf Eichmann one of the major organizers of the Holocaust He carried out the plans set forth in the Wannsee Conference, which was were the Final Solution came about. Responsible for the deportation of Jews to ghettos in Warsaw Poland.

20. Josef Rudolf Mengele “Angel of Death” research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. He was particularly interested in identical twins. Mengele's experiments also included attempts to take one twin's eyeballs and attach them to the back of the other twin's head, changing eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs, and other surgeries two Romani children were sewn together to create conjoined twins Once, I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anaesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again without anesthesia (Children of Flames)

21. Human Experiments • bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and bone transplantation from one person to another without anesthetics • The Luftwaffe conducted experiments with the intent of discovering means to prevent and treat hypothermia. • investigate the most effective treatment of wounds caused by mustard gas • experiments to investigate the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent • Experiments with poison • test the effect of various pharmaceutical preparations on phosphorus burns. These burns were inflicted on prisoners using phosphorus material extracted from incendiary bombs. • High altitude experiments - low-pressure chamber containing these prisoners was used to simulate conditions at altitudes of up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft