1. Hitler’s Attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jews

2. Hitler’s view: "We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the Last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind-the Jew has got to be exterminated."

3. Why “evolution”? What we now call the Holocaust (“burnt offering”), or Shoah (“calamity”, the term preferred by many Jews), did not begin as a highly sophisticated plot to wipe out all of Europe’s Jews. It progressed from point to point, becoming increasingly oppressive and murderous as time went on...

4. 1) Legislation Germany’s Nuremberg Laws made bigotry state policy Jews were (among other things) forbidden to: Employ a German (Aryan) Marry a German Have sexual relations with a German Belong to a German professional, social or cultural organization Vote/ Hold elected office

5. 2) Official Oppression The most dramatic example of this was the infamous Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) in November, 1938 This was a country-wide pogrom organized and encouraged by the Ministry of Propaganda, led by Josef Goebbels What happened?

6. Destruction of synagogues

7. Public humiliation of Jewish citizens

8. Vandalism of Jewish businesses

10. 3) Invasion of Poland: The Ghettos With the invasion of Poland came a challenge: What to do with its large Jewish population? The answer was to establish ghettos

12. The systematic murder of Europe's Jews began with “Operation Barbarossa”, summer 1941 Close to one million Jews had been killed before extermination camps had been built The groups that carried these murders were called the einsatzgruppen— “Task Forces”

13. The methods used in this first stage of mass murder were crude by later standards...

16. The leaders of the “Final Solution” Reinhard Heydrich Adolf Eichmann Chief of all security police, second in command of the SS Personal secretary to Heydrich, responsible for aministrattion of the SS camp system transport Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS

17. All was reported to Adolf Hitler

18. 3) The Wannsee Conference The decision had been made to exterminate Europe’s Jews in the autumn of 1941 January, 1942 — conference convened in Wannsee (outside Berlin) to discuss the organization of Hitler’s industrialized murder of Europe’s Jews

19. Carbon monoxide poisoning was a key method the SS used to murder Jews and other camp inmates. Mobile units, essentially sealed buses, were loaded with prisoners, driven long enough to ensure the death of the passengers, then unloaded by other camp inmates.

20. Initial experiments had already been carried out on Russian prisoners of war using carbon monoxide and Zyklon-B (a pesticide)

22. Eventually, large gas chambers were built in various camps and the bodies were either buried or incinerated in industrial furnaces, or “ovens”. The largest of these centres was Auschwitz-Birkenau

24. Auschwitz was the largest of 6 purpose-built extermination camps. Auschwitz was a factory-slave labour camp (Monowitz) and death camp. The others were: Sobibor Treblinka Maijdanek Chelmno Belzec

25. All were located in Poland

26. The results: Estimates of the total number of dead are around 10 million+ 6 million Jews 2 million Russian POWs 1.5-2 million Poles 800 thousand+ Gypsies (Roma, Sinta) Countless other “enemies of the state”

28. What made the Shoah different from past atrocities?  Its scale  Its focus on race and ideology  Modern, “civilized” perpetrators— Germany was a modern and sophisticated European state

29. Lasting results?  “Genocide” entered the lexicon  UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights  Sympathy for recognizing the sate of Israel  Long-term emotional suffering of survivors, families