2. Holocaust: The mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
The Holocaust is one of the darkest eras of human history. It was a brutal display of human
cruelty at its worst. It is said that the mind must be deeply disturbed to murder. Orchestrating
such an atrocious act must have taken much more than a simple disturbance of mind.
"The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole."
~ Moshe Katsav.
"The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it
didn't. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by
others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators,
possible bystanders." ~ Yehuda Bauer
3. Facts about The Holocaust:
◦ The Holocaust was a mass killing of Jewish people by the Nazi party( which formed German government) on an unprecedented
scale. 6-7 million Jews died during this period.
◦ This event occurred in Europe from 1933 to 1945.
◦ Adolf Hitler led the Nazi government at that time. Alongside Jews, their political rivals and people they despised were also
killed.
◦ An estimated 70-85 million people died as a result of World War 2.
◦ The government did not believe in equality or freedom. However, the rest of Germany prospered as a result of the governments
actions. This led people to living under the illusion that the government was doing nothing wrong. Many people even believed that
the treatment dealt to the Jews and the opposers of the Nazi government and Germany was just.
◦ Jews were not the only people massacred. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and
Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and
political enemies.
4. Hitler’s
Hatred
The Nazi hatred for Jews
has been explained citing
various reasons, but nobody
knows for sure what the
actual reason was. Some
popular views were that
Hitler despised the Jews
due to the conflicts between
Christianity and Judaism.
These conflicts led to anti-
Semitic views in Germany.
Hitler also believed that
Jews were trying to rule the
world. Hitler could also have
targeted Jews due to their
economic prosperity and his
belief that they were inferior
to the Aryans.
5. Atrocities during The Holocaust:
◦ Citizenship was revoked
◦ Kicked out of schools
◦ Doctors, lawyers, or people who owned businesses
were forbidden to do their work.
◦ Park benches and the beaches had signs saying,
◦ “No Jews Allowed.”
◦ Jews even had to give away their pets.
◦ In November 1938, things worsened as the Nazi government began
to use violence against Jewish people, instead of just passing laws
and saying bad things.
◦ For two days all over the country, they destroyed Jewish businesses,
and burnt down the Jewish places of worship, called synagogues.
◦ Homes were broken into. People were beaten. About 30,000 people
were arrested, and many were never seen again.
◦ Every Jewish person was in danger: children and old people, women
and men, rich people and poor.
◦ These two days are now called Kristallnacht, or “the Night of
Broken Glass.”
6. Anti Jew
Propaganda:
As depicted in this anti Jew
poster, the Nazis depicted
Jews as people who were
greedy and only interested in
money. The government
made the people believe that
they did this by trickery.
They were also depicted with
crooked noses and long
beards. They were however
very similar to their “Pure
Aryan Blooded
counterparts”, and
indistinguishable in
appearance.
7. The Beginning of The Horror:
◦ Hitler and the Nazi party wanted control over all of Europe. So, Germany
invaded Poland in 1939. This sparked the start of World War 2.
◦ Soon Germany invaded many other countries. By 1941, they had taken over
Poland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
◦ As they captured more countries, they also had more Jews.
◦ To distinguish Jews from others, they were made to wear a star of David on their
chests or on the arm.
◦ As anti Jew sentiments grew, so did the tortures. Jews too had started believing
what the government had said about them. They weren’t allowed in many places.
People attacked and were scared of Jews.
A Jew wears the star of David on
his arm(above).
8. The Concentration Camps: A “living hell” for the
Jews ◦ When the ghettos filled up, the Jews were transported to concentration, labour ,extermination and
death camps.The first camp Dachau was established in March 1933,after the Schutzstaffel(SS)
under Henreich Himmler
◦ The death camps were factories for killing people ,making them a symbol of violence and terror.
There were six death camps. Aushwitz was the largest.
◦ There were hundreds of concentration and labour camps. These camps would serve the purpose of
exterminating the Jews. The Nazis wanted to kill all Jews in countries
like France, Belgium, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, where the civilians deemed to be of
"enemy origin” ,and “inferior” to them ,and were viewed as a possible threat to Nazi power..
◦ Nazi scientists performed inhuman experiments on Jews , as Jewish lives did not matter to them.
◦ When the people arrived at death camps, their heads were shaved and they were all given a shower
,being doused in cold water in front of guards who would hurl verbal and physical abuse at them.
Corpses piled in a wagon(above)
9. Life at the Extermination Camps:
◦ The prisoners mainly included communists, ”asocials”,homeless
people,Jehovah’s witnesses and pacifists,and the many raids Der Fuhrer
conducted resulted in 2000 people being arrested in a single day.
◦ Many prisoners died even before arriving ,as most were transported on
trains over a period of days or weeks,and packed in so tightly that there
was rarely room to sit down.Food and water was scarce and bathrooms
were non existent.
◦ Prisoners at the ghettos were separated into men,women and children,and
their prison number was tattooed into their hands or sewn into their
clothes.The main motive was to strip the prisoners of any sense of
identity,or human dignity,to de-personalize them,and break their spirit,as
the Nazis already viewed them as less than human.
10. • In the camps, the SS officers established system of badges, usually triangles
under the prisoners assigned number on their uniform to identify the prisoners
belonging to separate groups, wherein Jewish were given two yellow triangles
forming star of David,Romas had brown triangles,homosexual people had pink
triangles,Jehovah’s witnesses had purple triangles,political prisoners had red
triangles , and asocials had black triangles.
• The general schedule of the camps ran as follows: prisoners would be forced to
wake up between 4-4:30a.m. and had approximately 30 minutes to get ready
for work, not following which they would get beaten badly. They would then be
taken outside in the chilling cold weather for rolecall, which occurred both in
morning and the evening, and would not be attended by many who already died
in their sleep or due to overwork, dehydration, starvation or general failure of
sanitation throughout the day.
• The prisoners were brutally tortured on showing signs of fatigue during their
work schedule ,and to add to it,they were unreasonably insulted by the SS
officers as per their whims and desires.
11. ◦ Betzec, Sobibór, and
Treblinka, in what is
now eastern Poland,
were the three death
camps used for the
Nazis’ Operation
Reinhard. Of the
approximately 1.7
million Jewish
people sent to these
camps, only about
100 survived.
12. ◦ Pictures showing the ill
treatment of prisoners of war
camps and forced labour
camps at Dachau,
Buchenwald and
Sachsenhausen .
◦ The forced labour camp
workers were divided into two
groups –
◦ Ostarbeiter(Eastern workers)
◦ Fremdarbeiter(Foreign
workers)
13. The Final Solution: Annihilation of
the Jewish People
◦ The term “Final Solution” was a euphemism used by Nazi’s
German Leaders,referring to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.
◦ The Nazis believed that the Jews had no right to live among them.
They wanted to keep Germany pure. So they sent the Jews to
ghettos.
◦ All personal belongings were taken before the Jews entered the
ghettos.
◦ Ghettos were walled off sections of the city were the Jews were
denied basic necessities like clean water, food, warmth and medical
services.
◦ Since the people in the ghettos lived cramped together, disease spread
easy. Many Jews died of starvation and disease. So, Jews tried to
escape and they went into hiding.
◦ If they were caught, they were shot immediately.
Not experiencing such excruciating pain
is a luxury we take for granted. This
picture shows the miserable condition of
children in the ghettos.
14. Massive Killing Operations
Begin:
◦ By autumn 1941, the SS and police introduced mobile gas vans. These paneled trucks had exhaust pipes reconfigured to pump poisonous
carbon monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing those locked within. They were designed to complement ongoing shooting operations.The plan to
systematically murder the Jews of the General government was plotted ,Under the code name Operation Reinhard. As part of Operation
Reinhard, Nazi leaders established three killing centers in Poland—Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka—with the sole purpose of the mass
murder of Jews.
◦ . The SS and police killed at least 167,000 Jews, as well as approximately 4,300 Roma (Gypsies), in gas vans at the Chelmno killing center about
thirty miles northwest of Lodz. In the spring of 1942, Himmler designated Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau)as a killing facility. SS authorities
murdered approximately one million Jews from various European countries at Auschwitz-Birkenau. German SS and police murdered nearly 27,00,000
Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas(Zyklon-B) or by shooting.
DEPORTATION OF
JEWS TO THE
BELZEC AND LODZ
GHETTOS
15. Heroes of the Holocaust
◦ Corrie Ten Boom: The Dutch Watchmaker Who Saved 800 Jews: Ten Boom and
her family decided to help Jewish people who were fleeing the Nazis. So they constructed a secret hiding place in ten Boom’s
bedroom. There, until 1944, the ten Booms sheltered some 800 Jewish refugees until they could be transported away to safety
◦ Miep Gies: The Woman Who Hid Anne Frank And Saved Her Diary: Gies (born
Hermine Santruschitz) worked for Anne’s father, Otto, at a pectin and spice company in Amsterdam. But after the Nazis
invaded the Netherlands, Gies soon realized that her boss was in danger. So she agreed to shelter the Franks in spare rooms
above the offices where she worked. For two years, Gies guarded their secret. As Anne Frank wrote about life in hiding, Gies
quietly provided for them, often visiting multiple grocery stores so that she wouldn’t attract suspicion by buying a lot of food at
one place.
◦ Paul Grüninger: The Swiss Border Commander Who Falsified Documents To
Save Jews : From 1938 to 1939, Grüninger falsified 3,600 Jewish refugees’ passports, allowing them to evade
detection and enter the country. “I’d rather break the rules than send these poor, miserable people back to Germany,” he
said.
16. Oskar
Schindler: The
Complicated
Businessman
Behind Schindl
er’s List
Oskar Schindler originally wanted to
hire Jews as they were cheaper to hire. He
was a member of the Nazi party and
crucial to them due to the fact that he
provided them with kitchen supplies.
However he eventually became disgusted
by them and did everything in his powers
to help the Jews. He sheltered the Jews
working for him from any harm.
17. Eugene
Lazowski:
Lazowski provided medical care for his
Jewish neighbors in Rozwadow. The area
had devised a system where if a Jewish
resident needed medical assistance they
would hang a rag on Lazowski's fence and
then Lazowski would make a house-call to
their residence under the cover of darkness.
He then injected many with the typhus
vaccine. After the samples were sent to the
government, the Nazis cordoned off this
area. Eugene Lazowski saved 8000
people.
18. Notable survivors and victims of the
Holocaust
Anne Frank- Anne Frank was possibly the most famous victim of the Holocaust. Anne and
her family hid in the hidden annex of her Dad's office building. Whilst in the office she wrote her
famous diary. Anne Frank and her family were sadly caught and moved to the Auschwitz
concentration camp were she died of typhus, aged 15
Victor E. Frankl- Victor E. Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and author. He published 39 books.
The autobiographical, ’Man’s Search For Meaning’, was a best seller. Frankl also developed logotherapy and
existential analysis. These were based on the philosophical and psychological concepts of finding meaning in
one’s life.
Simon Wiesenthal- Simon Wiesenthal was a survivor of the holocaust who became a Nazi hunter after the
Holocaust. After the events, he dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazis so
that they could be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Wiesenthal wrote The
Sunflower, which describes a life-changing event he experienced when he was in the camp. Sadly, Wiesenthal died
in his sleep at the age 96 in Vienna on September 20, 2005.
19. Aftermath:
The world will never forget The Holocaust. We shouldn’t. If we forget the dread, we only risk repeating it. If darkness looms light
will eventually find a way. The Holocaust was the darkest period of human history but it reminds us that we should stay together
and respect each other and their beliefs. Many people have shown how great a strong minded simple person with a bit of conscience
can be. We should never take anything for granted so that we never experience such horrors again.
20. Kristallnacht:
◦ The Kristallnacht or the Night of the Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA)
paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi
Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The name Kristallnacht (literally 'Crystal Night') comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets
after the vandalism and destruction of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues which were smashed.
◦ The Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst Vom Rath was a German
embassy official stationed in Paris.
Destroyed
Fasanstrasse
Synagogue in
Berlin.
