1. THE HOLOCAUST
CHAPTER 13 Section 3

2. Nazi Persecution of the Jews
During the Holocaust, the Nazis killed nearly 6 million Jews.
The Nazis also killed millions of people from other groups as well (Poles, Gypsies, the handicapped, the deaf, Jehovah’s Witnesses)

3. How did it happen?
Key: The Holocaust was not an over-night event. The Holocaust was a progression of events leading up to the death camps.

4. 1933
Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

5. 1933
The Reichstag building is burned so Hitler can create an atmosphere of crisis and seize more power

6. 1933
Nazis open their first concentration camps at Dachau, followed by Buchenwald, and Ravensbruck (for women)

7. 1938 Jews are required by law to… to register wealth and property
to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.
No longer practice medicine

8. Nazi Persecution of the Jews
The Hebrew word for the Holocaust is Shoah, meaning “catastrophe”, but is often used specifically to refer to the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews during WWII.

9. Red—Political Prisoners
Green—Criminals
Blue—Foreign forced laborers/emigrants
Pink—Homosexuals
Purple—Religious offenders—mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses
Black—Gypsies (later they will have a brown triangle), Mentally ill, Handicapped, Alcoholics, intellectuals

10. Nazi Ideology
Once the Nazis took power in Germany, they acted swiftly to implement the political racial polities Hitler had outlined in Mein Kampf
Although the Nazis persecuted anyone who opposed them, as well as the disabled, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Slavic peoples, their strongest hatred was for the Jews.

11. Nazi Ideology
Antisemitism (prejudice against Jewish people) had existed in Europe long before Hitler, he just took it to a new level.
For instance, Jews were persecuted during the middle ages. Jews had even been segregated and prohibited from owning land in prior time periods.

12. Nazi Ideology
For the Nazis, however, all Jewish people were evil to matter what their religion, occupation, or education.

13. The Nuremburg Laws
After the Nazis came to power in Germany, they quickly moved to deprive German Jews of many rights that all citizens had long taken for granted.

14. The Nuremburg Laws
In September 1935 the Nuremburg Laws took citizenship away from Jewish Germans and banned marriage between Jews and other Germans.

15. Soon more laws came. One defined a Jew as anyone who had at least one Jewish grandparent and prohibited Jews from holding public office or even voting.
Jews with “German” sounding names had to change their names to sound Jewish.

16. Chart from a German Racial Studies textbook during the time of Hitler

17. The Nuremburg Laws
By the summer of 1936, at least half of Germany’s Jews were jobless, having lost the right to work as civil servants, journalists, farmers, teachers, and actors.
In 1938 the Nazis also banned Jews from practicing law and medicine.
The signs say, in German, “Germans defend yourselves: Don’t buy from Jews”

18. The Nuremburg Laws Why didn’t they just leave Germany?
They had built lives there. They considered themselves to be German citizens. Many even thought that conditions would improve eventually. They were wrong.

19. Kristallnacht
On November 7, 1938, a young Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris.
10,000 Jews, including this man and his father, had been deported from Germany to Poland, and the distraught young man was seeking revenge for this act.

20. Kristallnacht
In retaliation for this killing, an angry Hitler ordered his minister of propaganda to stage attacks against the Jews that would appear to be a spontaneous popular reaction to news of the murder.

21. Kristallnacht
On the night of November 9th, 1938, this plan played out in a spree of destruction.

22. Kristallnacht
The anti-Jewish violence that erupted throughout Germany and Austria that night came to be called Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass”

23. Kristallnacht
The next morning, 90 Jews lay dead, hundreds were injured, and thousands more had been terrorized that night.
7800 Jewish businesses were destroyed and over 180 synagogues were wrecked.

24. Kristallnacht
After that horrible night, the Gestapo, the government’s secret police, arrested at least 20,000 wealthy Jews, releasing them only when they agreed to emigrate and surrender all their possessions.

25. Kristallnacht
In addition, the German government fined the Jewish community to pay for the damages caused on that night.
Jews arrested after Kristallnacht. They are lined up for roll call at Buchenwald Concentration Camp