Chapter 16

Part 3Pages 542-549

Terms to know

• Holocaust• Kristallnacht• Genocide• Ghetto• Concentration Camp

The Holocaust

• The systematic murder of over 11 million people by the Nazis

• More than ½ of the above were Jews

European history of Anti-Semitism

• The Middle Ages and Usuay• Banned from guilds, agriculture, trades

• The Bubonic Plague• Need for a scapegoat

• Pope Paul IV in 16th century• Russian pogroms

The need for a scapegoat

• Hitler blamed Jews for the sad state of the German economy and for Germany’s defeat during WWI

• Also…The Master Race: its purity had to be protected

• Also racial heirarchy in Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Persecution Began

• As early as April 1933

• Jews could not join the army• Have government laws• Marry Aryans• Attend concerts, universities• Had to wear Stars of David on their persons

and places of business

The Nuremberg Laws

• Stripped of jobs, property, citizenship

• Jews were encouraged to leave Germany BUT during the Depression, other countries who could not take proper care of their own citizens, were unwilling to absorb more people

Many Jews DID NOT want to leave

• Their property, money, extended families behind

• How would they support themselves in a foreign country

• Anti-Semitism was not limited to Germany

The Berlin Olympics 1936

• Provided full employment in Germany• Hitler wanted to show off his master race to

the world• Restrictions on Jews were lifted• Many Jews thought that the worst was over

Jessie Owens

• An American sprinter• Was Black• Took 4 Gold Medals

• Embarrassing for Hitler

Kristallnacht November 1938

• A Polish student in Paris assassinated a minor German official in the German Embassy in Paris

• The student was upset because the Nazis had “relocated” his family after the Polich invasion

Word of the Assassination reached Germany

• Nazi Storm Troopers were ordered to attack Jewish homes and businesses

• Other citizens were invited to join in

• Broken glass everywhere

• 10,000 Jews were arrested and made to pay for repairs

Kristallnacht

• Convinced most of the German Jews that it was time to leave

• But by this time there was nowhere to go

• BUT…children’s transports to Britain• Some individual true heroes

The United States

• Took people of “exceptional merit”• Like Einstein• Gropius (architect)• Mann ( writer)

• In the end, the U.S. accepted about 100,000

When refugees were turned away

• We all knew what they were going back to

• The St. Louis a German ocean liner with 900 + on board (more than 700 had immigration papers to the US)

• Was forced to turn back• France took them in but then France fell!

The Final Solution

• An effort to exterminate all of the Jews in Europe

• Only ¼ million left in Germany• But were rounded up in other conquered

countries

First Resettlement (relocation)

• Especially in Poland

• Sent to live in walled-up Ghettos• Sometimes factories were built next to the

Ghettos• Forced slave labor• Doctors weeded out those too weak, old to

work

Then concentration Camps

• Again, the weak were weeded out• The rest were worked to death

The Final Solution 1942

• The Wansee conference• Planned extermination• Preferred method: Gas

• Six death camps built in Poland• Most infamous and largest : Auschwitz• 12,000 gassed per day

The Survivors

• 1945 liberation• The Russians