19-3 The Holocaust Learning Targets: 1. Describe Nazi prejudices against Jews and early persecution of German Jews 2. Explain the methods Hitler used to try to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population

The Nazis believed Jews to be subhuman. They steadily increased their persecution of Jews and eventually set up death camps and tried to kill all the Jews in Europe

The Holocaust The mass murder of Jews under the Nazis Around 6 million Jews were killed The Jewish Term for the Holocaust is Shoah, which means “catastrophe” in Hebrew

Nazi ideology Nuremberg Laws (1935): Took citizenship away from Jewish Germans and banned marriage between Jews and other Germans By 1936, at least half of Germany’s Jews were unemployed ◦ Jews could not work as: govt. workers, journalists, teachers, actors & farmers

On Nov 7, 1938 in Paris, a Jewish man shot a minor German official. The Nazis used it as an excuse to have mobs attack Jews On Nov 9, 1938 mobs roamed throughout Germany and destroyed Jewish businesses and beat individuals It became known as Kristallnacht, (night of broken glass)

The Final Solution The Nazis initially put Jews in captured territories (Poland, Russia, etc…) in large walled off sections of cities called ghettos In 1942, the Nazis held the Wannnsee Conference in which they developed a plan to kill all the Jews in Europe

Concentration camps: Detention centers for healthy prisoners. People were used as slave laborers until they dropped dead. Extermination camps: Everyone else was sent here. The elderly, sick, children, etc.. They went to large gas chambers, then the bodies were burned

Two infamous extermination camps include: Auschwitz: ◦ Could kill 12,000 people a day ◦ 1,600,000 killed Treblinka: ◦ 850,000 killed Liberated by the Soviets late in the War

Over 1,000 years of Jewish culture in Europe was destroyed in only a few years % of all Jews in Europe were killed Many other groups were killed during the Holocaust ◦ Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners-of-war, homosexuals, political prisoners, and Jehovah Witnesses, the physically and/or mentally disabled

Race relates to a person's appearance - chiefly the color of their skin. It is determined biologically, with genetic traits such as skin color, eye color, hair color, bone/jaw structure etc. Ethnicity, on the other hand, relates to cultural factors such as nationality, culture, ancestry, language and beliefs. Caucasian is a race but there are many ethnicities within the Caucasian race e.g. Irish, Welsh, German, French, Slovak etc. What differentiates these ethnic groups from each other is their country of origin, language they speak, cultural heritage and traditions, beliefs and rituals.