1. Chapter 20, Section 4

2.  The Holocaust (mass murder of Jews) was a result of ideology that believed that Aryans (especially those of Germanic, Nordic and Anglo-Saxon blood) were superior to other groups of people.  As soon as Hitler was appointed leader in Germany in 1933, he began his campaign against the Jews. In 1935, he took to legal prosecution with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws.  These laws denied citizenship to Jews, banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and segregated them in all areas of society.

3.  Violence against the Jews were common. The most aggressive form of violence was the Kristallnacht– “night of broken glass.”  A Jewish refugee killed a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazis responded by attacking all Jews. The Gestapo (German secret police) destroyed both synagogues and Jewish businesses, along with arresting and killing many Jews on November 9 th, 1938.  Many Jews tried to flee the persecution, but with the global depression, and scare jobs, they were often turned away.

4.  Ultimately, Hitler wanted to destroy the Jewish population through genocide– the mass extinction of a certain group.  The original goal of concentration camps was to convert Jews and other undesirables (such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, those with mental illness, etc.) into ‘useful members’ of the Third Reich.  Concentration camps included Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck.  Death camps like Auschwitz and Belzec were solely for killing purposes, and were the last step in Hitler’s Final Solution– the extermination of the Jews within the Third Reich.

5.  During the early years of the Holocaust, strict immigration policies limited the ability of Jews to escape persecution.  As the United States entered the war, news of the camps spread, and officials met to discuss plans for evacuation.  In 1944, FDR established the War Refugee Board, which would work with the Red Cross to save Eastern European Jews.  Stalin (the closest Allied leader to the camps) showed little concern for what was going on.  Overall, the lack of supplies and willingness to divert military forces prevented additional Allied help.

6.  Most people did not realize the full extent of the devastation until the camps were liberated.  There was a large outpouring of support and aid to the survivors.  The Holocaust ultimately took the lives of 6 million people, ~1/10 of the total lives lost in World War II.  It helped promote the idea of an independent Jewish state, and in 1948, the country of Israel was created.