Genocide

What is a Holocaust?

  • The destruction or slaughter of a people on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

  • The mass killing of millions of Jewish people by the Nazis during World War 2 has come to be called the Holocaust.


Aushwitz-Birkenau:

  • Under the Third Reich there were many concentration camps: Dachau, Sobibor, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen and many more where jews were killed, but also the disabled, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Roma (gypsies) and political prisoners were also killed in concentration camps.

  • Most infamous and largest concentration camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Horrors of the Third Reich:

-This location of Auschwitz was the camp centrally olcated in the Nazi empire.

- Held a maximum of 120,000 prisoners.

- Killed 1.1 at Auschwitz

- This camp and others was example of totalitarianism.

- The third Reichs anti-semetic policies represented extreme nationalism and turned into the Holocaust - The Nazis final solution policy.


Background:

  • These camps held political prisoners, gypsies, slavs and other people viewed as inferior human beings.

  • The camps began as slave labor camps.

  • Supllying the camps became too expensive, and German Soldiers needed supplies.

  • The FInal Solution was a genocidal plan developed to solve this problem.

  • Camps were filled with large gas chambers to execute large numbers of people quickly.

  • 6 million jews were murdered under this policy.


Terms to know:

  • Genocide: the delibeate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, religious, or cultural group.

  • Ghetto: is usually a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, typically as a result of social, legal, or economic pressure.

  • Ethnic- belonging to a particular cultural group.

  • The great purge: where millions of people were executed or sent to labor camps in SIberia. This occurred in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938.

  • The holocaust: the destruction or slaughter of people on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. The genocide of jews during world war 2 is known as the holocaust.

  • The final solution: the Nazi policy of exterminating Europeans Jews, Gypsies, and concentration camps between 1941 to 1945.

  • Concentration camps: Nazi prisons where people were forced to work as slaves and millions were killed.



Armenian Genocide:

  • Perpetrators: Ottoman EMpire authorities.

  • Location - Ottoman Empire

  • Victims - Armenian Christians

  • Time period - World war 1

  • During world war 1 the Ottoman empire began a genocidal program against the ethnic Armenians living in Turkey.

  • Ottoman authorities suspected that some Armenians were collaborating with the Russian enemy.

  • The Ottomans responded with mass deportations to concentration camps, hangings and beheadings.

  • An estimated 1 million Armenians were massacred or deported.



Cambodian Genocide:

  • Perpetrators: Pol Pot’s regime (Khmer Rouge)

  • Location: Cambodia

  • Victims: Monks, teachers, educated artists, government officials.

  • Time period: 1970s.

  • In the early 19070s Pol Pot and his communist party, known as the Khmer Rouge, began a genocidal policy with the goal of turning the Southeast Asian country of Cambodia into a simple agrarian (farm) society.

  • The khmer Rouge invaded every city in Cambodia and literally forced the entire urban population into the countryside.

  • Teachers, artists, technicians, government officials, and monks were all targeted for execution. Anyone that had any education was suspect.

  • The sites where Khmer Rouge killed and buried over 1 million people are known as “The Killing Fields.”