The Holocaust 1933-1945

What does ‘Holocaust’ mean?

o Holocaust n 1 a sacrificial offering consumed by fire 2 an instance of

wholesale destruction or loss of life 3 often capthe genocidal persecution of the

European Jews by Hitler and the Nazi party duringWWII

o Shoah or Ha Shoah (literally denoting a "catastrophic upheaval") is the

Hebrew term for the Holocaust

o The Final Solution of the Jewish Question - the German Nazis' plan

to engage in systematic genocide against the European Jewish population during

World War II. The term was coined by Adolf Eichmann, a top Nazi official who

supervised the genocidal campaign.

o The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) - literally Devouring, or Samudaripen

(Mass killing) is a term coined by the Roma (Gypsy) people to describe attempts by

the Nazi regime to exterminate most of the Roma peoples of Europe during the

Holocaust.

Who were the Victims of The Holocaust?

.

Who were the Victims of The Holocaust?

o The Jews- used as scapegoats for everything that had gone wrong in Germany since WWI. They

were seen by the Nazis as subhuman & worth less than animals.

o Roma & Sinti Gypsies- like the Jews they were seen by the Nazis as racially inferior,

degenerate & worthless.

o Slavs, Poles & Russians- viewed as inferior & subhuman.

o Mentally & physically disabled- thought of as useless & a financial burden on

the state.

o Homosexuals- seen as degenerate & against the Aryan ideal.

o Political opponents- e.g. Communists, Socialists. These were people who disagreed with

Nazi politics & policies.

o Jehovah’s Witnesses- their religious beliefs made them refuse to pledge their allegiance

to the Third Reich.

Kristallnacht

November 9th – 10th 1938

T-4 Euthanasia Programme o Designed to kill physically, mentally & emotionally

handicapped people. The name comes from the address of the headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Charlottenburg.

o The process was carried out by doctors, nurses & physicians.

o Children were killed by medication or were starved to death.

o Adults were given lethal injections or gassed.

o Doctors & nurses were given supplementary payments known as ‘Schmutzgeld’ (dirty money).

o In 1941 Hadamar celebrated the cremation of its ten thousandth patient in a special ceremony where everyone (secretaries, nurses & psychiatrists) received a bottle of beer.

o Hitler ordered the program for adults to end in August 1941 but it continued as the ‘wild’ euthanasia program.

o Approximately 200,000 people were killed under the T-4 program.

T-4 Euthanasia Programme

Hartheim Castle, Austria a euthanasia killing centre where people

with physical and mental disabilities

were killed by gassing and lethal injection.

Buses used to transport

patients to Hadamar The windows were painted to prevent

people from seeing those inside..

This image originates from a film produced by

the Reich Propaganda Ministry. It shows patients

in an unidentified asylum.

Their existence is described as "life without hope." The Nazis sought, through propaganda, to develop

public sympathy for the Euthanasia Program.

Emmi G., a 16-year-old

housemaid diagnosed as

schizophrenic. She was

sterilized and sent to the

Meseritz-Obrawalde

euthanasia centre

where she was killed with

an overdose of tranquilizers

on December 7, 1942.

A victim of the Nazi

Euthanasia Program:

hospitalized in a

psychiatric ward for her

nonconformist beliefs

and writings, she was

murdered on January 26, 1944.

Friedrich Mennecke, a Euthanasia Program

physician who was

responsible for sending many patients to be gassed.

Nazi physician

Karl Brandt, director of the

Euthanasia Program.

Head nurse of the children's ward

at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility.

The Ghettos

A line of people wait to get a drink of water in the overcrowded

Warsaw ghetto which housed about half a million Jews. Living

conditions were miserable; insufficient food and water, unsanitary

conditions, and overcrowding led to starvation and rampant disease.

Children scale a wall to smuggle food into the ghetto. Conditions were

so extreme that they engaged in this activity despite the proclamation

issued by Dr. Ludwig Fischer (Governor of the Warsaw District from

October, 1939 to January, 1945), imposing a death penalty on Jews

who left the ghetto and on those who helped them. Warsaw ghetto, 1941. Homeless children.

A typical room in a ghetto. This scene of a makeshift market place in the Lódz ghetto shows how

some people tried to sell personal belongings for a little extra money.

The Lvov ghetto, shown here in the spring of 1942, was established in late

1941 with 106,000 people. By May of 1942, only 84,000 residents were left.

Ghettos were established to confine Jews into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern

Europe. Starting in 1939, Polish Jews were systematically moved into designated areas of

large Polish cities. The Ghettos were walled off, and any Jew found leaving them was shot.

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of these Ghettos, with 380,000 people and the Łódź

Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000.

The Ghettos

The Ghettos

The bodies of Jewish resisters lie in front of the ruins of a building where they were shot by

the SS during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

SS officers interrogate a captured resistance fighter

during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

began on April 19,1943, and ended on May 16,

1943. SS troops suppressed the uprising under

the command of General JŸrgen Stroop.

Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are led by German

soldiers to the assembly point for deportation.

One way Nazis suppressed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was to burn

blocks of buildings. German stormtroopers force Warsaw ghetto dwellers of all ages to move,

hands up, during the Jewish Ghetto Uprising in April-May 1943.

Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are marched

off through a debris-covered street to the Umschlagplatz for

deportation.

The Einsatzgruppen

o The Einsatzgruppen were death squads sent into Eastern Europe to murder Jews, gypsies & political opponents of the Nazis.

o They operated from 1941-1943.

o Their standard killing method was to gather Jews from surrounding areas and then shoot them in front of mass graves.

o In some areas they also took gas vans to poison their victims with exhaust fumes.

A member of Einsatzgruppe D prepares to

shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling on the edge

of a mass grave filled with the bodies of previous

victims.

Over one thousand Jews from the Ukrainian town of Lubny, ordered to

assemble for "resettlement," in an open field before they were massacred by

Einsatzgruppen. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.

A young mother with her two children,

sitting among a large group of Jews from

Lubny who have been assembled for mass

execution by the Germans. (October 16,

1941)

Members of an

Einsatzkommando

before shooting a

Jewish youth.

The boy's murdered

family lies in front

of him; the men to

the left are ethnic

Germans aiding the

squad.

Slarow, Soviet

Union, July 4, 1941.

Men with an unidentified unit

execute a group of Soviet civilians

kneeling by the side of a mass grave.

(June 22 - September 1941)

A German policeman shoots

individual Jewish women who

remain alive in the ravine after

a mass execution of Jews from

the Mizocz ghetto. (October 14, 1942)

Death toll approx. 1.6 million Jews

The Einsatzgruppen

Concentration Camps &

Death Camps

Chelmno

Treblinka

Sobibor

Majdanek

Belzec

Auschwitz

Concentration Camps & Death Camps

Chelmno

o Constructed in Nov. 1941

o Victims were killed in gas

vans . (one large gas van for 150 victims

and two smaller ones for 80 - 100 victims) o Until spring of 1942, the

bodies were buried in four

long mass graves.

o After that time the corpses

were cremated. (Two crematoria

were built, which were probably

complemented by two mobile field ovens.)

o 1st phase: 7th Dec 1941-

March 1943.

o 2nd phase:June and July

1944

o Death Toll: 155,000-320,000

Jews of the Lodz Ghetto being marched to

Chelmno death camp, 1942 A convoy arrives in Chelmno

Chelmno: One of the three gas vans

Chelmno: Jews before being

sent to the gas chamber.

Belzec

o Construction began on 1st Nov. 1941 and was completed

by the end of Feb. 1942.

o Initially, there were three gas chambers using carbon monoxide housed in a wooden building. They were later replaced by six gas chambers in a brick and concrete building

o Corpses were then dragged to burial pits.

o During the early months of 1943, the corpses of the murdered Jews were disinterred and burned in open air pits.

o 1st phase: mid-March 1942 to mid-May 1942.

o 2nd phase: mid-July 1942 to the end of December 1942

o Death Toll: 600,000

Jews of the Lublin Province of Poland are

deported to the Belzec death camp, March 1942.

Gipsies in Belzec before being

sent to the gas chamber

Two Jews before execution in Belzec death camp

A woman about to be executed in Belzec extermination

camp. The soldier on the left is an SS guard, the

soldiers in the background are Ukrainian guards. Picture found on an SS prisoner.

Treblinka

Transports to the Camp

Deportation from Siedlce, 22nd

August 1942

One of the very rare photographic documents

of Treblinka: prisoners of the "Straflager“

preparing a pyre for the burning of the victims

oEstablished in 1941 as a forced

labour camp.

oA second camp was built,

opening for operation on July 23,

1942. This was to be the

extermination camp.

oTreblinka opened with three gas

chambers in operation but

quickly expanded to at least six.

oThe bodies would be dragged to

mass graves for burial.

oStarting in the Autumn of 1942,

the corpses were disinterred and

stacked on a grid of old railway

tracks for burning.

oAutumn of 1943 evacuation of

the camp was begun & orders

were given to destroy the camp.

oDeath Toll: 750,000- 850,000

Auschwitz Birkenau

Birkenau arrival platform, known as the ‘ramp’.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Awaiting the ‘Selektion’.

Auschwitz Birkenau

The ‘Selektion’ process.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Deemed "unfit for work“ & sent almost immediately to the gas chambers.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Jews who were classified as

“not fit for work” waiting in a grove

outside Crematorium IV before they

were to be gassed. At this point, the

Jews were exhausted and in a state

of shock from the horrors of the

journey and the selection process

that they had just endured.The vast

majority had no idea what fate

Awaited them.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Men & women fit for work, after the delousing process.

Auschwitz Birkenau

Sorting out the personal

Belongings of the recent

arrivals at Auschwitz in a

special section of the camp

known as "Canada."

Auschwitz Birkenau

Jewish children, kept alive in the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration

camp, pose in concentration camp uniforms between two rows of

barbed wire fencing after liberation

Sacks of human hair packed for dispatch to Germany.

A warehouse full of shoes and clothing confiscated from

the prisoners and deportees gassed upon their arrival.

One of the warehouses in Auschwitz, which is stuffed to

overflowing with clothes confiscated from prisoners.

Corpses of women piled up on the floor of Block 11. (February 1945)

Prisoner badges at Auschwitz The same coloured triangles were used throughout the camp system.

On arrival each prisoner was registered & given a number that replaced his or her name. This number was tattooed on

the prisoner’s forearm.

A scrap of fabric with this number was worn at chest height on the left of the jacket. Below this was a coloured triangle

which showed the prisoner’s category. This triangle or ‘winkel’ was also worn on the hem of the right trouser leg.

‘Re-education

prisoners’, whose

sentences were

officially limited to

46-52 days but often

lasted 3-6 months,

were identified by a

large ‘E’ rather than

a triangle.

political criminal anti-social

e.g. lesbian,

prostitute

Jehovah’s

Witness

emigrant Sinti &

Roma

gypsy

homosexual

Jew, with a different triangle over the

yellow one according to reason of

imprisonment, making a Star of David

e.g. Red & Yellow – politicall Jew

From mid-1944 a yellow strip

replaced the yellow triangle

Prisoners in the

punishment units also

wore a black dot.

Prisoners suspected of

planning an escape

wore a red dot & the letters iL for im Lager (in

the camp)