Holocaust From 1933-1945

“Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows --- at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example --- as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been united, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews. -Hitler, Mein Kampf

Stages Legal repression and emigration Kristallnacht Resettlement and deportation Concentration and labor camps Ghettos Pogroms Death Squads Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution

Legal Repression and Emigration 1930s faced legal, economic, and social rights restrictions Jews excluded from: Owning farms Being lawyers and judges No civil servants Veterans from WWI could keep their positions UNITL 1937 1935- Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws Passed in 1935 Prohibited Jews from marrying Aryans Annulled existing marriages Protecting German blood Could not serve as civil servants Stripped German Jews of their citizenship No civil rights

Emigration Jewish intellectuals were the first to leave Albert Einstein visited the US in 1933 Returned to Belgium and never to Germany Eventually in the U.S. Sigmund Freud Left Austria in 1938 and never returned

Japanese Policy of Prohibition of Persecution 1936 German-Japanese Pact 1938 Japan decided against forcing out Jews in Japan Japanese foreign minister said: “I am the man responsible for the alliance with Hitler, but nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his antisemitic policies in Japan.”

Kristallnacht November 7, 1938 “The Night of the Broken Glass” Damage: 7,000 Jewish shops 1,668 synagogues 91 dead? 30,000 sent to concentration camps Prove they were emigrating soon, or gave everything to the Nazis

Kristallnacht continued Results: Jews were restricted to carry weapons Expected Jews to pay for the damages from the attacks Collectively pay an “atonement tax” = over a billion Reichsmarks Emigration rapidly increased

Resettlement and Deporation Tried to convince Britain and France To accept Jews in colonies Australia British Locations Palestine Guinea French Locations Madagascar

Madagascar Seriously considered Harsh weather would lead to high death rate Isolated Never used, the mass killings started first Decided to send Jews east toward Russia

Concentration and Labor Camps 1933-1945 Dachau One of the first Used to hold, torture, or kill political prisoners Including Communist and Social Democrats By 1939, heavy concentration of Jews and POWs

Concentration Continued Over 15,000 camps were created Many of these in Poland People were used as slave labor, undernourished and tortured Stages: Arrive on freight cars Separated in categories Worked to death

Ghettos (1940-1945) Confined Jews to small parts of town Warsaw was the largest at 380,000 people Held nearly 400,000 people or 30% of the Warsaw population Only 2.4% of the land 9.2 people per room of a home Judenrat ran the ghetto German-appointed Jewish community leaders Controlled the food, water, heat, medicine, and shelter

Judenrat Expected to form a list of Jews to be “sent away” Refused to go any further Many committed suicide or were shot for their actions Uprising did occur, usually not with any success

Pogroms (1939-1942) Violent mob attacks on Jews Some government encouraged, some spontaneous Carried out by local residents Death tolls could reach from just a few to 14,000.

Death Squad (1941-1943) Einsatzgruppen (part of the SS) Job was to eliminate (execute) Jews Execution done publicly and often included local help Used mainly machine guns and hand grenades Had killing sites outside of major towns

Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution Goring had protected Jewish workers from executions Himmler wanted them all dead After the Battle of Britain, Goring lost his credibility The Final solution was to execute all Jewish members of society It was to costly to keep them in prison or shoot them Started using Zyklon-B

Total Deaths Poland 3,000,000 or 90% Baltic Countries 228,000 or 90% Germany & Austria 210,000 or 90% Bohemia & Moravia 80,000 or 89% Slovakia 75,000 or 83% Greece 54,000 or 77% Netherlands 105,000 or 75% Hungary 450,000 or 70% Byelorussian SSR 245,000 or 65% Ukrainian SSR 900,000 or 60% Belgium 40,000 or 60%

Deaths Continued Yugoslavia 26,000 or 60% Romania 300,000 or 50% Norway 890 or 41% France 90,000 or 26% Bulgaria 14,000 or 22% Italy 8,000 or 20% Luxembourg 1,000 or 20% Russian SFSR 107,000 or 11% Finland 22 or 1% Denmark 52 or less then 1%

Totals To begin the war, there were 8,861,800 (estimated) Jews in Europe 5,933,900 (estimated) were killed during the war Millions of other ethnic groups were killed as well (Slavs, Ethnic Poles, Serbs, Soviet POWs, Romani, etc…)