1.
The Holocaust

2. Euthanasia Program
Murder program which called for the systematic killing mentally and physically disabled patients living in institutions
First mass-murder that pre-dated the genocide of European Jewry
Aimed to eliminate “life unworthy of life”
severe psychiatric, neurological, or physical disabilities represented at once a genetic and a financial burden upon German society and the state

3. Scope widened from infants & toddlers to up to 17 years old
August 1939: doctors, nurses & midwives compelled to report any newborn infants and children under the age of 3 who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability
October 1939: parents of children with disabilities encouraged to admit their children to a specially designated pediatric clinics
Killing wards with specially recruited medical staff murdered their young children by lethal overdoses of medication or by starvation
Scope widened from infants & toddlers to up to 17 years old
Estimates of at least 5,000 perished as a result of this program

4. Fall 1939 killing program extended to adults with disabilities living in institutions
Hitler signed a secret authorization which protected participating physicians, medical staff and administrators from prosecution
Code named “T4”
Sent questionnaire to all public health officials, public and private hospitals, mental institutions and nursing home under the guise of gathering statistical information
Beginning January 1940, selected patients for the euthanasia program were removed and transported to one of the central gassing installations for killing

5. Within hours of arrival the victims perished in specially designed gas chambers, disguised as shower facilities, using pure carbon monoxide gas
Bodies were then burned in crematoriums
Ashes were sent back to families along with fictitious causes of death (natural death being very common)
Secret program became public and protests ensued causing a halt to the program in August 1941
Estimated 70,273 died at the six gassing centers between January 1940 and August 1941

6. Adolf Hitler's authorization for the Euthanasia Program (Operation T4), signed in October 1939 but dated September 1, 1939.
Oral history

7. Program extended until end of the war
Second Phase
Continued on a more concealed manner
Drug overdose & lethal injection
Many adults & children were starved to death
Program extended until end of the war
Expanded range of victims: geriatric patients, bombing victims, foreign forced laborers
Historians estimate that the “Euthanasia” Program in all its phases claimed the lives of 200,000 individuals

8. Outside Germany others were killed due to being designated “life unworthy of life”
Killing carried out by SS and police forces
Mass killings, mobile gas vans
Seen as a rehearsal for subsequent genocidal policies
P. 60

9. Poland Policy in Poland to subdue the people then intensify the terror
“Poles will become slaves to the German Empire”
Daily executions throughout Poland of groups perceived as being a threat: University professors, politicians, clergy. WHY?
18% of all Polish priests were killed
Chelmno-47.8%, Lodz-36.8%, Poznan-31.1%
Within 4 months of German invasion 80% of priests in one region were killed

10. Polish children that were sufficiently considered “German” were kidnapped and sent to be raised by German families
German officers examine Polish children to determine whether they qualify as "Aryan." Poland, wartime.
SS doctors examine Polish children judged "racially valuable" for adoption by Germans. Poland, October 1942.

11. Polish babies, chosen for their "Aryan" features, to be adopted and raised as ethnic Germans. Poland, wartime.

12. Other Targets Gypsies (Roma): exterminated to prevent racial mixing
Jehovah’s Witnesses: would not enlist in army, participate in air-raid drills, or give up meetings, would not salute Hitler. They were “voluntary prisoners” – would be freed if they renounced their faith
Homosexuals: against the law, identified by pink triangles in camps. Seen as a threat to Aryan breeding policy
Freemasons: secret fraternal order that did not ban Jews. By 1935 all Masonic Lodges were closed and/or destroyed

13. Ghettos
The term “ghetto” originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice established in 1516
During WWI Ghettos were city districts in which the Germans concentrated the Jewish population and forced them to live under miserable conditions
There were at least1,000 ghettos in German controlled Poland and the Soviet Union
First ghetto established in October 1939

14. Some lasted a few days, others for months or years
Ghettos segregated and controlled the Jewish population as the Nazi leadership deliberated over options to realize the goal of removing the Jewish population
Some lasted a few days, others for months or years
Largest ghetto – Warsaw ghetto, 400,000 in 1.3 square miles
Map of Ghettos

15. Types of ghettos Closed
(situated primarily in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union) were closed off by walls, or by fences with barbed wire
large number of Jews living in the surrounding areas to move into the closed ghetto, thus exacerbating the extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions. Starvation, chronic shortages, severe winter weather, inadequate and unheated housing, and the absence of adequate municipal services led to repeated outbreaks of epidemics and to a high mortality rate.
Most ghettos were of this type.

16. Open ghettos Destruction ghettos
had no walls or fences, but there were restrictions on entering and leaving.
These existed in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union
Destruction ghettos
were tightly sealed off and existed for between two and six weeks before the Germans and/or their collaborators deported or shot the Jewish population concentrated in them.
These existed in German-occupied Soviet Union (especially in Lithuania and the Ukraine), as well as Hungary

17. Ghettos Ghettos became holding pens
Jewish labor was exploited, goods and property were confiscated
Ghetto life was one of squalor, disease, and despair
10-15 people lived in spaces that previously housed 4
Daily calorie allotments rarely exceeded 1100 (even with smuggling)
Summer 1942 Germans began liquidating the ghettos.
Within 18 months almost all ghettos of Poland were emptied
Late summer 1944 nearly 3 million Jews had been transported to concentration camps and killing centers

18. Survivor Testimony ABRAHAM LEWENT BENO HELMER BLANKA ROTHSCHILD
JUDITH MEISEL
LEOPOLD PAGE
LEAH HAMMERSTEIN SILVERSTEIN

19. Warsaw Ghetto
One of the largest pre-war Jewish populations 375,000 or 30% of city’s total population
November 1940 became a closed ghetto
Germans practiced “clean violence” – death by starvation
In 1941 nearly 1 in 10 ghetto residents died of starvation – 43,000
Orphanage run by Janusz Korczak. August 6, the Germans lined the 192 children up in rows of 4. Silently the children waited to board the trains. Korczak was offered a way to avoid the trains-he refused. He and the children were taken to Treblinka and gassed

20. Polish civilians walk by a section of the wall that separated the Warsaw ghetto from the rest of the city. Warsaw, Poland, 1940–1941
The type of "Aryan" identification card which Vladka Meed had used from 1940–1942 on the Aryan side of Warsaw, smuggling arms to Jewish fighters and helping Jews escape from the ghetto.

21. Ethel Stern Born: Warsaw, Poland 1919
Ethel was born to a Jewish family living in Warsaw. When she was 9, her family moved to the town of Mogielnica, about 40 miles southwest of Warsaw. Ethel's father spent much of his time studying religious texts. His wife managed the family liquor store. Ethel attended public school during the day and was tutored in religious studies in the evening.
: Ethel had always wanted to be a teacher. At age 14, after attending religious school in Lodz, she began to teach in the town of Kalisz, where her brother lived. There she was introduced by a matchmaker to Zalman Brokman, who first asked his rabbi and then Ethel's father for permission to marry her. In March 1939 they were married. When war began in September, Ethel returned to Mogielnica, six months pregnant.
: Ethel gave birth to a baby boy in January 1940 in Warsaw. By November, the Jews in Warsaw were confined to a ghetto. Ethel's husband traded gold pieces for food and goods. When mass deportations began in late 1942, those with sewing machines were allowed to remain in a factory to sew military garments, so Ethel's husband bought two machines. Ethel worked at the factory until it was liquidated in 1943.
In May 1943 the garment factory workers were deported to the Trawniki labor camp near Lublin. Ethel was never heard from again.
Ethel Stern
Born: Warsaw, Poland 1919

22. Oral Stories Roundup in the ghetto link
Lack of burial for the corpses link
Conditions in the ghetto link
Film footage conditions film 2
After the Germans established the Warsaw ghetto in October 1940, conditions deteriorated rapidly. The Germans strictly controlled the movement of goods into and out of the ghetto. There was not enough food to feed the ghetto residents. At great personal risk, many Jews attempted to smuggle in food. The German food ration for Warsaw ghetto inhabitants amounted to less than 10 percent of the ration for a German citizen. Thousands of Jew died in Warsaw each month because of starvation or disease.
The Nazis sealed the Warsaw ghetto in mid-November German-induced overcrowding and food shortages led to an extremely high mortality rate in the ghetto. Almost 30 percent of the population of Warsaw was packed into 2.4 percent of the city's area. The Germans set a food ration for Jews at just 181 calories a day. By August 1941, more than 5,000 people a month succumbed to starvation and disease.

23. Lodz Ghetto Industrial center of Poland
Jews were 1/3 of the Lodz population
Ghetto was sealed in April 1940, 164,000 Jews lived in 48,100 rooms most without running water or sewer connections
In operation until 1944, longest running of all the ghettos

24. A German postcard showing the entrance to the Lodz ghetto
A German postcard showing the entrance to the Lodz ghetto. The sign reads "Jewish residential area—entry forbidden." Lodz, Poland,
Jews deported to the Lodz ghetto. Poland, 1941 or 1942
German police raid a vandalized Jewish home in the Lodz ghetto. Lodz, Poland, ca. 1942

25. Documenting the stories
Lodz had a group of journalists and historians who formally recorded the details of ghetto life
Kovno had several photographic chroniclers
Personal diaries and journals

26. Photograph taken by George Kadish: a member of the Kovno ghetto underground hides supplies in a well used as the entrance to a hiding place in the ghetto. Kovno, Lithuania, 1942.
One of the two milk cans in which portions of the Ringelblum Oneg Shabbat archives were hidden and buried in the Warsaw ghetto.

27. 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union
Advanced to the outskirts of Moscow
Fighting a war on 2 fronts
Saw the Slavs as inferior to the German Aryan race – made the killing of these inferior races essential
Turning point of the Holocaust

28. Einsatzgruppen
Mobile killing units that traveled with the German Army, 13,000 men
They were a unit of the SS and police
In the Soviet Union their assignment was to murder those perceived to be racial or political enemies behind German combat lines in the occupied Soviet Union
At first the Einsatzgruppen shot primarily Jewish men. By late summer 1941, however, wherever the Einsatzgruppen went, they shot Jewish men, women, and children without regard for age or sex, and buried them in mass graves.

29. Locals helped identify Jews to the Einsatzgruppen
Jews were marched or transported by truck to the execution site, where trenches had been prepared. In some cases the captive victims had to dig their own graves.
After the victims had handed over their valuables and undressed, men, women, and children were shot, either standing before the open trench, or lying face down in the prepared pit

30. Shooting was the most common form of killing
The psychological burden that mass shootings produced on the men prompted the Germans to find a more convenient mode
Gas vans – enclosed cargo van that piped the carbon monoxide from the van’s exhaust into the sealed cargo area, killing all inside
By spring 1943 they had killed over 1 million Soviet Jews
Mobile units proved inefficient and psychologically burdensome to the killers
Killing centers created

31. Members of an Einsatzkommando (mobile killing squad) before shooting a Jewish youth. The boy's murdered family lies in front of him; the men to the left are ethnic Germans aiding the squad. Slarow, Soviet Union, July 4, 1941
Over one thousand Jews from the Ukrainian town of Lubny, ordered to assemble for "resettlement," in an open field before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppen. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.

32. Roundup of the Jews of Lubny, shortly before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments. This photo, originally in color, was part of a series taken by a German military photographer. Copies from this collection were later used as evidence in war crimes trials. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941.
Ukrainian Jews who were forced to undress before they were massacred by Einsatzgruppe detachments. This photo, originally in color, was part of a series taken by a German military photographer. Copies from this collection were later used as evidence in war crimes trials. Lubny, Soviet Union, October 16, 1941

33. Jewish men and boys await their extermination in an athletic field near Lomazy in August 18, They were marched from this place for about 1000 yds (into the woods) where 50 or so Jews had been forced to dig a large pit earlier in the day Jews were shot this day and details of them being tortured and brutalized while being murdered are documented. The pit filled with water (being below the waterline) and many died from suffocation and drowning as the heap of bodies above them forced them downwards.
Einsatzkommandos lining women & children after having them undress. Notice pregnant woman to the right. No one, not even infants & children were spared. The extreme antisemitism of the German's dictated the doctrine that Jewish women and children must be destroyed because they represented the future of European Jewry. This action took place on the outskirts of the Mizoc Ghetto on October 14, 1942
Afterwards. After being made to lie down, each person was shot in the neck at the base of the head. Notice adults shielding their children. During roundups, any Jew unable for any reason not to show up in the market place or designated assembly area was shot onsite. Any Jew found after a roundup action was immediately shot In the beginning, graves were not even dug, natural pits and depressions in the earth were used and the burial detail was left for the locals to handle. Most non-Jewish locals were anti-Semitic to the point that they helped the Germans. Anti-semitism had reached a boiling-point in Europe, and no where was it worse than in Germany, Poland, the Ukraine & Lithuania.

34. Typical massacre as described by an Einsatzgruppen commander: “The Einsatz unit would enter a village or town and order the prominent Jewish citizens to call together all Jews for the purpose of “resettlement”. They were requested to hand over their valuables and shortly before execution to surrender their outer clothing. They were transported to the place of executions, usually an antitank ditch, in trucks-always only as many as could be executed immediately….Then they were shot, kneeling or standing….and the corpses thrown into the ditch.”
Map
Video
Oral history
From a survivor: “I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 pm they gave the command “Fill the pits.” Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil….His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: “Finish me off!”…..A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately, “Mommy!” That was all I say since I fell unconscious.”

35. The Men of the Einsatzgruppen
Historians are divided about their motivations
One…they are ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances who gradually overcame their moral inhibitions
Two….they are Germans who became willing executioners, sharing in the same vision of exterminationist anti-Semitism
What do you think?
Either way – they chose to become killers either willingly or reluctantly

36. Heavy drinking was common among the men of Einsatzgruppen
One leader claims “he never permitted the shooting of individuals but ordered that several of the men should shoot at the same time in order to avoid direct personal responsibility”
Others “demanded the victims lie down flat on the ground to be shot through the nape of the neck”
When asked why “It was psychologically an immense burden to bear”
Heavy drinking was common among the men of Einsatzgruppen
To relieve this psychological burden on the men, killing centers were created
1.2 millions Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen one by one

37. Babi Yar
Sept 1941 the city of Kiev was under Nazi control. An order was issued to kill all the Jews in Kiev
Remaining Jews (about 60,000) were marched to the Babi Yar Ravine and executed
This was one of the largest mass murders at an individual location during World War II
33,771 Jews were massacred in two days
In the months following the massacre over 100,000 were killed at Babi Yar
Map

38. P. 97 witness
P. 98 survivor
August 1943 in the face of defeat by the Soviets, the mass graves at Babi Yar were dug up and the bodies burned in an attempt to get rid of the evidence of mass murder
Work was done by concentration camp workers. After more than a month of digging and burning – the workers were killed. 25 escaped and 15 survived to tell the story

39. No monument or headstone was erected at the site of the massacre until 1974 with no victim names nor was the word Jew used on the memorial

40. Wansee Conference January 20, 1942
15 high ranking Nazi officials meet in Wansee, a suburb of Berlin
SS General Reinhard Heydrich, SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann,
Purpose: Discuss & coordinate the implementation of what they called “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question”

41. The Final Solution
Code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews
Authorized by Hitler sometime in 1941
Heydrich convened conference not to deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime

42. Objectives of meeting:
(1) to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the “Final Solution”
(2) to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation
None of the officials present at the meeting objected to the Final Solution policy that Heydrich announced.
Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution"