Holocaust and Final Solution1933-1945

Numbers before the war

• Germany: ½ million Jews or < 1% of the population

• Fascist Italy: less than 50,000, 0.1% of population

• Soviet Russia: 5.2 million, or 4% of population

Four Phases of Nazi Anti-Semitism

• 1) Early Measures: Selective use of Anti-Semitic Propaganda, 1923-33

• 2) Early Measures: Sporadic Violence / Discrimination, 1933-37

• 3) Mass destruction and confiscation of property, forced expulsion, concentration camps, 1938-1941

• 4) "Final Solution"

When speaking about the Holocaust what time period are we referring to?

•The “Holocaust” refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), the end of the war in Europe.

How many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust?

•While it is impossible to ascertain the exact number of Jewish victims, statistics indicate that the total was over 5,860,000. Six million is the round figure accepted by most authorities.

How many non-Jewish civilians were murdered during World War II?

•Roughly 5 000 000

•Gypsies, Serbs, Poles, intelligentsia, resistance fighters, homosexuals, Jehovah witnesses, criminals, beggars, vagrants

1) Early Measures

• 1933

• January 30 - Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President von Hindenburg.

• March 22 – the first concentration camp Dachau is opened (near Munich)

Dachau

1933•April 1 – The first state run boycott of Jewish shops and businesses

•April 7 - First Nazi Laws excluding Jews from Civil Service, medical professions, and the Arts.

Gestapo Established

•April 26, 1933

Burning of books

•May 10, 1933

•Public burning of books written by Jews, political opponents of the Nazis and others.

Sterilization permitted

•July 14, 1933•Law permitting the forced sterilization of

Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, African-Germans and others considered “unfit.”

•East European Jewish immigrants stripped of German citizenship.

1934 and 1935

•July 12 – first mass arrests of homosexuals in Nazi Germany

•April 1935 – Jehovah witnesses banned from civil service jobs and are arrested

Nuremburg Laws

•September 15, 1935

•Nuremburg Laws enacted

•anti-Jewish racial laws enacted;

Nuremburg Laws

•Jews lose the right to German citizenship and to marry Aryans.

•Sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews forbidden.

•Aryan women under age 45 cannot work in Jewish homes.

1936•July 12 - First

German Gypsies are arrested and deported to Dachau Concentration Camp.

•August 1-16 - Olympic Games take place in Berlin. Anti-Jewish signs are temporarily removed.

1936•March12-13 Austria is

peacefully annexed (Anschluss) by Germany. All anti-Semitic decrees immediately applied in Austria.

•July 6-15 -Representatives from thirty-two countries meet at the Evian Conference in France. Most countries refuse to let in more Jewish refugees.

Kristallnacht •November 9-10

•Night of Broken Glass

•First state organized riot in Germany and Austria directed against Jews ands Jewish businesses. Hundreds of synagogues destroyed; Jewish homes and shops looted; nearly 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps. Jews were later forced to pay for the damages.

1938•November 12 - Decree

forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses into Aryan hands.

•November 15 -All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools.

•December 2-3 - All Gypsies are required to register with the police.

Anti-Semitism in Italy

• Mussolini's Pragmatic Anti-Semitism

• "Manifesto of Racist Scientists" 14 July 1938

• "The Jews do not belong to the Italian race.... The Jews represent the only people that have never been assimilated in Italy and that is because they are composed of non-European racial elements, absolutely different from those that produced Italians."

October 1939

•Hitler extends power of doctors to kill institutionalized mentally and physically disabled people in the “euthanasia” program.

•October 12 - Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland.

November 23, 1939

•Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an armband or yellow star.