The Holocaust

Adolf Hitler & the Nazi Party

  • Hitler gains support in the Nazi Party by attacking the hated Treaty of Versailles

  • Blames Germany’s problems on Jews and foreign powers

  • Appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933

  • Transforms the Weimar republic the Third Reich, a total dictatorship

Germany Under Nazi Rule

  • Hitler wanted to create a master race Aryan people would be
    considered a pure race and superior to other people

  • anti-semitism or prejudice against Jews had been around for centuries

Nazi Leaders

  • Joseph Goebbles the head of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry and
    controlled all communications

  • Encouraged book burning to eliminate other ideas

  • Heinrich Himmler the SS – the Nazi’s secret police

  • Formed death squads known as the Einsatzgruppen

  • One of the architects of the Holocaust and death camps

  • Adolf Eichmann helped to organize the Holocaust

  • Was in charge of transporting Jews from ghettos to concentration camps

The Nuremberg Laws

  • Passed in 1935

  • Said anyone with any Jewish blood be considered a Jew

  • Further restrictions were placed and persecution of the Jews increased.

Kristallnacht

  • Kristallnacht - Night of broken glass took place November 1938.

  • Jewish stores, houses, and synagogues were systematically destroyed 

  • Marks the beginning of widespread government-led violence against Jews

Jews in Germany

  • Jewish registry where all people with Jewish ancestry had to register with the government

  • Jews had to wear the star of David badge everywhere they went

  • Forced to live in isolated ghettos

The Final Solution

  • Plan developed in 1942 to eliminate all Jews from Europe 

  • Jewish people from across Europe were taken to concentration camps 

  • In the camps they were used for hard labor or killed

The Camps

  • Many could better be classified as extermination camps - set up to kill
    a mass number of Jewish people 

  • Dr. Josef Mengele out experiments on Jewish people at Auschwitz

Rescue and Resistance

  • underground resistance movements were formed to assist Jews in escaping 

  • The residents of Chambon-sur-Lignon- a village in the south of
    France helped thousands of Jews escape to freedom

  • Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -  April 19, 1943

  • 750 Jews were able to hold off German soldiers to avoid being
    taken to the concentration camps

  • Eventually lost the battle – 7000 were killed and 56000 were deported.

  • The White Rose resistance group distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets 

  • Led by students Sophie and Hans Scholl 

  • Caught by German authorities and killed in 1942

Liberation of the Camps

  • Armed forces reach camps starting in summer 1944

  • Soviet forces liberate Auschwitz and camps in Poland and Eastern Germany

  • American forces liberate Buchenwald and camps in the west

The Nuremberg Trials

  • As the war ended, many top Nazis committed suicide

  • 22 major Nazi criminals were tried for their crimes in Nuremberg

  • Most claimed to be just following orders

  • 12 were sentenced to death

  • Some escaped to south america where they hid for years