1. Anne Frank and Holocaust Background Information
Ms. Ozmun
8th grade English

2. Recognizing Stereotyping, Scapegoating, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Reflect on why stereotypes are dangerous, even if people who use them often claim they mean no harm.
Be prepared to discuss.
Why is any use of stereotypes harmful, even in a joke?
Examples:
Cheerleader
Homeless Person
Old Person
Young African-American Man
Asian Student
Baby
Little Girl
Little Boy
Teenage Boy
Teenage Girl
New Yorker
Californian
Midwesterner
Southerner
Not smart
Nuisance
Forgetful
Athletic
Good Student
Cute
Likes Dolls
Likes Toy Cars
Likes Sports
Likes to Talk on the Phone
Rude
Laid Back
Honest
Friendly, Hospitable

3. Real Stereotypes
Real stereotypes are not funny. They are harmful and hurtful. They keep us from seeing people as individuals. Stereotypes are especially dangerous when they determine how people act toward one another.
In the 1930’s in Germany, the Nazis used stereotypes of Jews to turn other Germans against them. Posters with hateful stereotypes of Jewish people—showing exaggerated features such as big noses and greedy expressions—were common. Frustrated by losing World War I and by the economic problems they then faced during the Great Depression, many Germans needed someone to blame. The Nazis picked up on this. To take the public’s attention off them, even before they came to power in 1933, the Nazis blamed Germany’s problems on “international Jewry.” Jews everywhere, not just in Germany, were blamed for the economic conditions, even for losing the war.
Germany had a totalitarian government in which all sources of information were controlled. But even if that hadn’t been true, Germans needed someone to blame. They were easily persuaded to make Jewish people scapegoats for their problems.
Scapegoating, or attributing blame, works because it gives people a focus for their frustrations and their anger and gives them a reason for their prejudices.
Scapegoating doesn’t have to be based on fact for it to work. Neither does prejudice. Many Germans and people in other countries were prejudiced against Jews for all kinds of reasons that didn’t make sense. Prejudice is strong feelings that can be difficult to change. People who hate a certain group often have never actually met a member of that group.
Discrimination is prejudice in action. Discrimination is a way to exclude or abuse people for reasons that make no sense—usually because of their race, religion, nationality, or anything else that sets them apart. Discrimination requires action on the part of the person who discriminates. That’s why it is easier to identify someone who discriminates than someone who is prejudiced

4. This 1940 poster advertises the worst of the Nazi anti-Semitic films, "The Eternal Jew."

5. The caption: "The Jew: The inciter of war, the prolonger of war
The caption: "The Jew: The inciter of war, the prolonger of war." This poster was released in late 1943 or early 1944.

6. Vocabulary for Anne Frank Background Information
Stereotype:
a standard mental picture that is held by all members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, affective attitude, or unreasonable judgment.
Scapegoating:
one that bears the blame for others; one that is the object of irrational hostility or hate.
Prejudice:
an irrational attitude of hostility or hate directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.
Discrimination:
the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically—rather than individually; prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment; racial discrimination

7. Annihilation: complete destruction
Under the Nazis, the goal of the German government was to kill all the Jewish people in Europe in a step-by-step plan carried out by government workers. Other people whom the Nazis considered unworthy were also marked for death.
These are some important vocabulary terms you need to know:
Annihilation: complete destruction
Anti-Semitism: anti-Jewish action, sentiments, or statements
Expropriate: to transfer ownership from another person to oneself
Genocide: the deliberate killing of an entire group of people
Ghetto: the section of many European cities in which Jews had traditionally been confined from the Middle Ages through the early 1880’s. (By the 1930’s when Hitler came to power, Jewish ghettos in Europe were a thing of the past. They were started again by the Nazis and their followers)
Persecute: to oppress by harassing and torturing
Systematic: carried out in a step-by-step manner

8. What does the word HOLOCAUST mean?
–noun 1.a great or complete devastation or destruction, esp. by fire. 2.a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering. 3.(usually initial capital letter ) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually prec. by the). 4.any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
Synonyms: 1. inferno, conflagration, ruin, havoc, ravage.

9. Famous Quote from Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin was an outspoken opponent of Hitler and the Nazi Regime. How can we apply this to our life?

10. How the Holocaust Progressed..
Stage 1: (Early 1930’s)
Registration: All Jewish people were required to register with the government as Jews.
Star of David on their clothing (visible): All Jewish people were required to wear a Star of David in order to be recognized immediately by officials.

11. Information about Stages:
It is very important to understand that none of these stages were absolute--People could decide whether or not to enforce the laws and whether or not to comply with them.
But people who resisted were usually imprisoned or executed.
The Nazis singled out Jews for death, but they were not the regime’s only targets. Others imprisoned and murdered included anyone who disagreed with or spoke out or acted against the Nazis.

12. A yellow Star of David badge bearing the German word Jude (Jew)
In September 1941, the Nazi regime, at Goebbels's urgent request, ordered Germany's Jews over the age of 6 to sew on their clothing a yellow Star of David with the word Jude (Jew) in bold, Hebrew-like letters. The following year, the measure was introduced in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and other lands under German control.

15. How the Holocaust Progressed
Stage 2: Expropriation
(Late 1930’s)
Laws passed to take away Jewish businesses, jobs, and wealth.
No school
No travel
Intensified after 1939
No phones, cameras, radios, or pets.
Why was it important for Stage 1 to occur before Stage 2? Do you think the stages were pre-planned by the Nazi Government?

16. A boy sits on a bench in a public park
A boy sits on a bench in a public park. The words painted on the bench say, "For Aryans only."
By law, German and Austrian Jews were prohibited from using many public facilities except those marked "For Jews only." In some cities, Jews were not allowed in public parks, swimming pools, or movie theaters. Jews were allowed to shop in stores only during designated hours, usually late in the day when stores had run out of fresh foods.
What does this remind you of from American History?

17. German Jews are forced to turn in their radios
On September 23, 1939, Jews in Germany were forced to turn in their radios to local authorities.
Why do you think the government would have them turn in their radios?

18. How the Holocaust Progressed
Stage 1: Definition: (Early 1930’s)
Registration
Star of David on their clothing (visible)
Stage 3: Concentration
Moving Jews to the Ghetto
Ghetto—fenced in, cannot get out
Slave laborers: Working for little to no money.
Limited: food, shelter, and heat.
Life in the Ghetto = slow death
Stage 2: Expropriation
(Late 1930’s)
Laws passed to take away Jewish businesses, jobs, and wealth.
No school or travel
After 1939: No phones, cameras, radios, or pets

19.                                                                                                                                                                                                 
GHETTOS IN POLAND
Germany occupied western Poland in fall Eastern Poland was not occupied by German forces until June In south-central Poland the Germans set up the Generalgouvernement (General Government), where most of the early ghettos were established. Ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions.
Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities both from the population as a whole and from neighboring Jewish communities.
The Warsaw ghetto, established on October 12, 1940, was the largest ghetto, in both area and population. There, more than 350,000 Jews--about 30 percent of the city's population--were eventually confined in about 2.4 percent of the city's total area.

21. 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.

22. A sign, in both German and Latvian, warning that people attempting to cross the fence or to contact inhabitants of the Riga ghetto will be shot. Riga, Latvia,
Why would they want to keep people from crossing the fence?

23. A crowd of Jews fill the market square.

24. a typical ghetto room

25. Warsaw Ghetto Wall

26. March, 1943: SS guards oversee a column of Jews with bundles walking down a main street in Krakow during the final liquidation of the ghetto. They get rid of the ghettos… Where do you think these people are being taken?

27. How the Holocaust Progressed
Stage 1: Definition: (Early 1930’s)
Registration
Star of David on their clothing (visible)
Stage 3: Concentration
Moving Jews to the Ghetto
Ghetto—fenced in, cannot get out
Slave laborers
Limited: food, shelter, and heat
Life in the Ghetto = slow death
Stage 4: Annihilation; The final solution
Killing of Jews…but also anybody else who wasn’t “perfect”, including:
Anybody who speaks out, Communists, Democracy, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Blacks, Jehovah’s witnesses, Mental and/or physical disabilities
Stage 2: Expropriation
(Late 1930’s)
Laws passed to take away Jewish businesses, jobs, and wealth.
No school, No travel, No phones, cameras, radios, or pets

28. SHOES AND HOLOCAUST
After taking over one of the concentration camps in Poland, these Soviet soldiers are overwhelmed by the number of shoes they find. Why do you think the shoes affect the soldiers so much?

29. MORE ON SHOES
Quote from “Walking with Living Feet”: But here each shoe is different, a different size and shape: a high heel, a sandal, a baby’s shoe so tiny that its owner couldn’t have been old enough to walk, and shoes like mine. Each pair of those shoes walked a path all its own, guided its owner through his or her life and to all of their deaths. Thousands and thousands of shoes, each pair different, each pair silently screaming someone’s murdered dreams.

30. Comprehension Questions
Why does Dora describe the differences in the shoes?
What does the last sentence mean to you?

31. CARTLOAD OF SHOES The wheels are turning, turning,
What are they bringing there?
They are bringing me a cartload
Of quivering footwear.
A cartload like a wedding
In the evening glow;
The shoes—in heaps, dancing
Like people at a ball.
Is it a holiday, a wedding dance?
Or have I been misled?
I know these shoes at a glance
And look at them with dread.
The hells are tapping:
Where to, where to, what in?
From the old Vilna Streets
They ship us to Berlin.
I need not ask whose
But my heart is rent:
Oh, tell me, shoes, the truth
Where were the feet sent?
The feet of those boots
With buttons like dew,--
The child of those slippers,
The woman of that shoe.
And children’s shoes everywhere,
Why don’t I see a child?
Why are there bridal shoes there
Not worn by the bride?
Among the children’s worn out boots
My mother’s shoes so fair!
Sabbath was the only day
She donned this footwear.
And the heels are tapping:
Where to, where to, what in?
From the old Vilna streets
They chase us to Berlin.

33. Kristallnacht
“Nazis smash, loot, and burn Jewish shops and temples,” screamed the headline on the front page of The New York Times on November 11, 1938.
Kristallnacht-“Night of Broken Glass” took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 in Austria and Germany.
The night was filled with a “mass frenzy of destruction,” wrote one historian. The destruction of Jewish-owned property may have seemed like random acts of vandalism. It wasn’t.
During Kristallnacht, synagogues were set on fire or destroyed completely. Mobs attacked Jewish shops and homes, smashing windows and looting contents. Jews were taunted, beaten, humiliated in the streets and in their homes. Many Jewish people died.
Kristallnacht was used as an excuse to round up Jews who have been singled out for arrest earlier. More than 30,000 were taken to concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The arrest lists had been drawn up in advance. The camps had been made larger in preparation.

34. Kristallnacht: the official beginning of the Holocaust
AFTER KRISTALLNACHT
BEFORE KRISTALLNACHT

35. Burning synagogue in Rostock the morning after Kristallnacht
Residents of the mid-size city of Rostock watch the burning Augustenstrasse synagogue the morning after Kristallnacht, November Friedrich Best, a non-Jewish teenager who lived near the synagogue, took the photograph. As he ate his breakfast, he saw from the kitchen window that a crowd was gathering. Suddenly, flames leaped from the roof of the synagogue. Best ran and got his camera. He snapped two photographs, which he later developed and showed to his parents. Fearing that he would be arrested if the police found out that he had recorded the event, his parents insisted that he destroy both prints and negatives. Best secretly saved the negatives and sold them to the city archive in 1958 after a call for Nazi-era artifacts was published in the Rostock newspaper.

36. Dachau concentration camp
Early photo of Dachau concentration camp, established in March 1933.

38. This electrified fence, and its guard towers, is at the extreme outer edge of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Out of the picture to its left are the barracks of "A" lager. This was the quarantine section of the men's camp where new arrivals selected for slave labor were warehoused. Interiors of these barracks can also be viewed in this exhibition. This gives a sense of the enormous size of Birkenau. From the far end of this photo to the opposite end of the camp behind us, it is almost exactly one kilometer

39. View of the Auschwitz's double, electrified, barbed wire fence and barracks.

40. View of the entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I)
View of the entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). The gate bears the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes one free).
How can this be seen as true?

41. View of the kitchen barracks, the electrified fence, and the gate at the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). In the foreground is the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free). (1945)

42. Interior of a barrack type 260/9-Pferdestallebaracke (stable barracks)
Interior of a barrack type 260/9-Pferdestallebaracke (stable barracks). (After January 1945)

43. The notorious doctor of Auschwitz, Josef Mengele, has become an enigma of the twentieth century. Mengele's handsome physical appearance, fastidious dress, and calm demeanor greatly contradicted his attraction to murder and gruesome experiments. Mengele's seeming omnipresence at the ramp as well as his fascination with twins have incited images of a mad, evil monster. His ability to elude capture had increased his notoriety as well as given him a mystical and devious persona. But in May 1943, Mengele entered Auschwitz as an educated, experienced, medical researcher. With funding for his experiments, he worked alongside some of the top medical researchers of the time. Anxious to make a name for himself, Mengele searched for the secrets of heredity. The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of genetics: if Aryan women could assuredly give birth to twins who were sure to be blond and blue eyed - then the future could be saved.
Mengele, as he learned while working for Professor Otmar Freiherr von Vershuer, believed that twins held these secrets. Auschwitz seemed the best location for such research because of the large number of available twins to use as specimens.

44. The prisoners that were taken from the camps were sent on what became known as "Death Marches" (Todesmärsche). Some of these groups were marched hundreds of miles. The prisoners were given little to no food and little to no shelter. Any prisoner who lagged behind or who tried to escape was shot.

45. annihilation

46. Corpses of Auschwitz prisoners in block 11 of the main camp (Auschwitz I), as discovered by Soviet war crimes investigators.

48. What event occurred that allowed Hitler and the Nazis to gain power?
In 1929, the crash of the New York stock market plunged the world into an economic depression called The Great Depression.
Many German bankers who lost money were Jews.
Germany was in a weakened state of mind due to this.

49. What event triggered the beginning of World War II?
Poland was invaded by Germany during 1939.
Why did Germany choose Poland as its first target?
Poland had the largest population of Jews.
The Jewish population of Poland just before the start of the second world war was about 3.3 million.

51. How long did it take Germany to take over the rest of Europe?
Less than two years…
by 1941, Germany controlled most of Europe, including France, and Germany had begun to invade North Africa and Great Britain.
By 1942, Germany even controlled part of Africa.