Topic #2: The Holocaust

Essential Question: How did Nazi ideology lead to the Holocaust?

Genocide

Deliberate extermination of a racial or cultural group.

Holocaust

Who: Jews/Non Aryans and Nazis

What: A mass slaughter of Jews and non “Aryans” carried out by Nazi government before and during WWII.

When: 1933-1945

Where: Nazi Germany

Why imp: It killed 6 million Jews (2/3 of European Jew population) and 6 million non-Jewish people (Soviets, Slavic people, Roma, disabled peoples, black people, etc.)

Concentration Camps

Who: Jews/Non Aryans and Nazis

What: Prison camps where conditions were inhumane. Prisoners were starved or worked to death, or killed immediately. They were initially for political prisoners, but later used for Jews.

When: First camp opened in 1933

Where: Nazi Germany

Why imp: The camps effectively eliminated opposition while providing slave labor to support the war effort.

Jewish Ghettos

Who: Jews and Nazis

What: Sections of towns/cities where Jewish people were forced to live in Nazi occupied territories. The Nazi’s goal was to get Jewish people to suffer/die off due to poor conditions such as starvation, degrading Nazi guards, overcrowding and a lack of sanitation.

When: The first ghetto was created in 1939

Where: Nazi occupied countries (not Germany)

Why imp: The ghettos allowed the Nazis to concentrate, control, and exploit the Jewish population before deportation to extermination camps.

Final Solution

Who: Jews and Nazis

What: Hitler’s program of systematically killing the entire Jewish population. Nazis would transport men, women, children in cattle cars to death camps where most prisoners were starved or worked to death.

When: 1941-1945

Where: Nazi Germany

Why imp: 6 million Jews and 6 million non-Jewish people were killed.

Death camps

• Auschwitz - Birkenau was the largest death camp.

• Jews were shot.

• Jews were sent to gas chambers where they were suffocated by Zyklon B and died.

• Joseph Mengele performed cruel medical experiments on Jews.

Liberation

• As Allied forces were pushing into Western Europe, Nazis forced surviving prisoners to go on death marches to evacuate camps because they didn’t want prisoners alive to share stories with the Allies.

• Allies started pushing into Germany and liberating camps.

Post War

• After the war, people were displaced all over Europe and families were torn apart.

• Many Jewish people moved to Israel in 1948 which was a country created after WWII as a safe haven for Jewish people.