1. World War II: The Holocaust & Crimes Against Humanity

2. Gruesome Discoveries
Dead Soviet and Polish POWs at Ohrdruf Camp

3. *The Death Toll of World War II
Total deaths (both theaters)
57 million deaths
by far the deadliest war in history
Vast majority of deaths were civilians:
12 million soldiers
45 million civilians
Holocaust – systematic extermination of six million Jews and six million other “untermenschen” in concentration camps

4. The Roots of the Holocaust

5. Eugenics & Nazi Racial Ideology
Herrenvolk – “master race”/ “Aryans”
Untermenschen – “sub-humans” – Jews, Roma, homosexuals, etc.
Eugenics – pseudo-scientific theory of heredity
Social Darwinism

6. Ghettos
– Jews are publicly humiliated and stripped of their jobs
– Jews are stripped of citizenship and moved into urban ghettos
*1938 – Kristallnacht – “the night of broken glass” signals the end of safety for Jews in Germany
*1938 – Jews are forced to surrender all their property and begin to be sent to concentration camps

7. Public Humiliation

8. The Holocaust

9. Wannsee Conference Berlin, 1942
*Problem= Firing squads are psychologically taxing for German soldiers
“Final Solution to the Jewish Question”
Deportation from ghettos
Extermination camps

10. Jewish Resistance: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

11. Evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto

12. Ghettos & Camps

13. Himmler’s Secret Speech to the SS
“I want to make reference before you here, in complete frankness, to a really grave matter. Among ourselves, this once, it shall be uttered quite frankly; but in public we will never speak of it. I am speaking of the evacuation of the Jews, the annihilation of the Jewish people… We can say that we have carried out this heaviest of all our tasks in a spirit of love for our people. Our inward being, our soul, has not suffered for it.”
Poland, Oct. 4, 1943

14. Railroad to Auschwitz

15. Arrival at Auschwitz

16. Auschwitz

17. Prisoners

18. Starvation

19. Mass Graves Left: SS Einsatzgruppen – early mobile killing units
Right: Later, SS turned to concentration camps and mass extermination by gas (Bergen-Belsen mass grave)

20. Crematoria

21. Who Were the Victims?

22. Who Were the Victims? Jews enemies of the state
Roma and Sinti (“gypsies”)
the mentally and physically disabled
homosexuals
Soviet P.O.W.s
Jehovah’s Witnesses
some Catholics
common criminals
*Prisoners were identified by group with special badges
*About 12 million people were killed in the Holocaust

23. Human Experimentation

24. *Germany Dr. Josef Mengele “Angel of Death”
Medical officer at Auschwitz
Determined fate of incoming prisoners
Work assignments
Gas chamber
Experimentation
Amputation
Chemicals
Vivisection
Studies on twins
Personally selected 400,000 prisoners to die in gas chambers in Auschwitz