Final Solution

Wannsee Conference January 20, 1942 15 high ranking Nazi officials meet in Berlin to coordinate the implementation of the “Final Solution” to the Jewish Question Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann were present

Wannsee Conference The Final Solution was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, and physical annihilation of European Jews The conference was held to: Inform and secure support from agencies relevant for the implementation Inform participants that Hitler had appointed Heydrich to coordinate the operation The decision had already been made to annihilate the Jews, the purpose was only to discuss implementation

Leaders at Wannsee Conference Heydrich Eichmann

Wannsee Conference Heydrich indicated 11 million Jews would fall under the Final Solution Including Jews in United Kingdom and neutral ares (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey) They were to be separated by gender, then the able bodied Jews were to be used to build roads A large number of those would be lost through “natural reduction”

Chelmno Gassing Vans Lodz ghetto experiment (December 1941) People were told they had to shower before moving to the next camp and forced to take their clothes off and get into a van The exhaust of the van was re-routed to go inside the van

Chelmno Gassing Vans Once the driver started the engine, the people inside were suffocated immediately The van would bring the bodies to a camp in the woods and unload the bodies They would be unloaded and burned in mass graves The driver would go back to the castle, clean the van, and reload with more victims

Operation Reinhard Plan to murder all Jews in Generalgouvernement (German occupied Poland that wasn’t directly annexed) The (RSHA) Reich Security Main Office was responsible for coordinated the deportation to killing centers

Operation Reinhard Odilo Globocnik directed operations between 1941 and 1943 His assistant was Christian Wirth Three killing centers were operational as a part of Operation Reinhard Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka

Operation Reinhard There were four main aims of the operation Resettle (i.e. kill) Polish Jews Exploit skilled labor before killing them Secure the personal property of Jews Identify and secure alleged hidden and immovable assets such as factories, apartments, and land

Operation Reinhard They tested the gasses on Soviet and Polish POWs They were said to have threatened their own men with gassing to keep them ‘in line’ The majority of the victims of Operation Reinhard were from Polish ghettos Several forced labor camps were also a part of Operation Reinhard

Operation Harvest Operation Harvest was to get rid of all the Jews left in Lublin District of the Generalgouvernement It was in response to resistance against Nazis in Treblinka and Sobibor as well as uprisings in Warsaw and others Gas chambers don’t work at Majdanek, so they shoot them; music was played through the loudspeakers to cover the sound of the killings

Josef Mengele SS physician Assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verhuer-a leading researcher in twins studies 1937 joined the Nazi party 1943 transferred to be a physician at Auschwitz

Josef Mengele The medical staff performed selections at the camps Mengele is most known as “the angel of death” or sometimes the “white angel” for his cruel demeanor Would appear many times when he was off duty to ensure that potential subjects would not be missed He would appear sober at the ramp, which was unusual for those in charge of selection

Josef Mengele Previously performed legitimate experiments with twins, now with the opportunity to maim or kill subjects, he performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments with twins-mostly children Had a fascination with heterochromia: a condition in which the irises of an individual were two different colors He collected the eyes of his victims for research materials

Josef Mengele Many of his test subjects died as a result of his experimentation or were murdered to facilitate post-mortem exams

CONCENTRATION 100 of these in Nazi-occupied Europe prisoners used for forced labor prisoners usually lasted less than 1/2 year communists, homosexuals, criminals, social-democrats, artists. First camp was opened in 1933, right after Nazis came to power

Count Folke Bernadette negotiating for prisoners RAVENSBRUCK Camp for women only run by German women who were criminals prisoners worked on remodeling furs 50,000 killed 14,000 rescued by Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadette negotiating for prisoners

EXTERMINATION Started out as ordinary concentration camps later modified with gassing installations for use on humans, now “DEATH CAMPS” two sub-groups: 1) Majdanek and Auschwitz, Birkenau 2) Operation Reinhard camps and Chelmno “NAZIS GET CLOSE TO CREATING HELL ON EARTH!!!”

MAJDANEK Established in 1941 as a POW camp started its part in the Final Solution in 1942 Jews, Poles and Soviet POW’s sent here had two gas chambers to exterminate

AUSCHWITZ Started operations in January 1940 (Poland) Himmler chose Auschwitz as the place for the Final Solution had 4 gas chambers/crematories by 1943 mass killings with Zyklon B gas commanded by Rudolph Hoess recorded 12,000 kills in one day

ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS TEETH WITH GOLD PILES OF GLASSES

ZYKLON-B GAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE COMPARED TO GAS. DROPPED FROM CEILINGS

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS Sterilization of men and women endurance of pain to high and low temperatures and pressure experiments on twins to increase number of multiple births to Aryan women injections of phenol to kill patients Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children together to make Siamese twins

OPERATION REINHARD Largest single massacre of Holocaust March 1942-November 1943 named after Reinhard Heydrich carried out at three camps, run by the SS every Jew that arrived at one of the camps would be dead in 2 hours. Total of 1,700,000 Jews killed

BELZEC MARCH 1942 JEWS FROM LUBIN GHETTO- POLAND OPERATIONS STOP DECEMBER 1942 CAMP WAS DISMANTLED AND PLOWED OVER AND PLANTED ON

SOBIBOR MAY 1942 3 GAS CHAMBERS ESCAPE OF 300 JEWS AND SOVIET POW’S ONLY 50 LIVE GAS CHAMBERS SHUT DOWN AFTER ESCAPE

TREBLINKA JEWS FROM WARSAW GHETTO 10 GAS CHAMBERS LOCATED EAST OF WARSAW BODIES WERE BURNED IN OPEN PITS AUGUST 1943

Camp Totals

Jewish population before, Jewish population after Holocaust STATISTICS BY COUNTRY Jewish population before, Jewish population after Holocaust

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