Holocaust Midterm Review Flashcards
1
Q
Define the Holocaust
A
- the holocaust was a systematic, industrialized killing of the Jews and others (mentally disabeled, Gypises, homosexuals, etc.) by the Nazi regime
- state sponsored, systematic, persecution, and annihilation of European Jewry and other victims of racial and political discrimination carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1939 - 1945
- While there was a lead up to genocide as Lemkin defines it, the most intense period was during 1939 - 1945 which coincides with WWII which Doris Bergen claims it would not have happened without it
- the location was in Europe and the goal was more living space and having the racially pure race
- was considered industrialized because after the Nazis expanded their territories, they would ship a lot of the Jews to the Poland region where they were either sent to concentration camps or killing camps
2
Q
Origins of the Holocaust
A
- antisemitism
- weimar republic
- Hitler’s rise to power
- WW1
- important events/decrees
NOT AN EXHUASTIVE LIST
3
Q
antisemitism in Europe
A
- had been in Europe for a long time (Bavarian petition opposing equality for Jews in 1850)
- some people blamed for WW1
- pogroms against Jews had been going on for a long time in Russia
- idea that Jews were conspiring to take over the world, against Christians
- Jews fault for WW1 on the home front, not Germans in the battlefield
- there was also anti-communist rhetoric that was spread along with this (they were also one of the groups that were persecuted)
4
Q
Weimar Republic
A
- genocides don’t happen in democratic regimes
- was set to fail in a way but was successful initially
- large deb from WW1, partly blamed for losing the war
- Hitler was able to work his way through the system (lack of consensus of the country, able to appeal to farmers in rural land and Center Catholic Party)
5
Q
Hitler’s rise to power
A
- was born in Austria, got rejected from an art school
- after participating in WW1, came back and joined the German Worker’s Party in 1919
- in 1923 was the Beer Hall Putsch which failed to overthrow the current government; taught Hitler and the Nazi party that the only way he and the Nazi party could overthrow was legally basically
- then went to jail where wrote “Mein Kampf”
- Hitler was named vice chacellor by Fronz von Papen in 1933, thought would be able to control him
- rose through the ranks, able to appeal to the people
6
Q
Important Decrees
A
- idea of consolidation of power in 6 months in 1933 (turned in one party system, Hitler essentially kills democracy)
- have the Reichstag Fire where the Parliament building is burned down
- have the enabling law that allowed Hitler to enact new laws without interference from the president or the German parliament for four years
- legalization of eugenic sterilization
- introduced the process of coordination (political control, alignment of organizations like youth programs, and censorships/propo)
- have night of long knives in 1934 where Hitler kills the head of SS and roughly 100+ members of the SS
- 1935 Reich Citizenship Law defined what a Jew was for the first time
- 1935 Law of Protection of German Blood and Honor (prohibited inter-race major, increased social discrimination, reinforced negative stereotypes about the Jews)
- 1936 head of the SS and concentration camps was now in charge of all police forces in Germany
- 1938: Evian Conference (this is where 32 nations from around the world came together to discuss what they were going to do with the Jews in Germany and Austria since they didn’t want them; a lot of countries didn’t say anything but some took a few Jews such as Dominican Republic and Shanghai)
- 1938: Kristallnacht (night of broken glass); German diplomat was assassinated and then this happenned, fireman came but also to protect “Aryan” properties, attacked Jewish businesses, afterward made Jews pay for destruction
- 1939: Kindertransport (10,000 Jewish refugee children were sent to GB and forced to leave their parents)
6
Q
WW1
A
- was the cheapening of human life, also a part of WW2
- normalization of violence
- resentment surrounding loosing the war
7
Q
Stages of the Holocaust
A
- Stage 1: Segregation, Pauperization, Pogroms (1933 - 1939)
- Stage 2: WW2 (Indirect Destruction, Reservation, Ghettoization, 1939 - 1940)
- Stage 3: Onset of Killing, Mass Gassings, and Shootings (1941)
- Stage 4: Industrialized Mass Murder (1942 - 1944)
- Stage 5: Death Marches, Liberation (1945)
- Stage 6: Aftermath, 1945 - present (trials, reparations, memorials, histography)
8
Q
spanned multiple continents
A
- Nazi Party originated in Germany with Hitler’s rule but expanded with the first invasion being in Poland, marking the start of WW2
- Ended up technically spanning 3 continents (North Africa, Europe, and Asia)
- Hitler had global ambitions so he wasn’t even really close to his goal
9
Q
significant features of the holocaust
A
- spanned multiple countries
- propaganda by the Nazi
- empire inside an empire with the SS and concentration camps
- T4 program
- social death of the German Jews
- self-policing society
- ghettos
10
Q
propaganda by the Nazi
A
- could be considered the first modern genocide, had a lot of mass media
- was heavy use of film and cinema coupled with Hitler’s charisma
- overplayed Jewish stereotypes with noice, propaganda of violence (spreading lies about them)
- Ministry of Propaganda, under Goebelle’s restricted, no freedom of speech
- dehumanizing the Jews, isolating them with this idea of “social death” using the decrees from the Reich document we talked about in class (legal and civil exclusion, social segregation, cultural isolation, economic isolation with no jobs)
11
Q
empire inside empire with these concentration and killing camps
A
- distinction between the camps
- were close to 30,000 of camps
- camps were very functional in a way
- Dachau was the model camp and it was the first one opened; it was mostly a concentration camp but only started gassing at the end
- beyond just Jews, communists, and gypsies, homosexuals (were also those that were atypical in society like prostitutes)
- functionalist vs. internationalist
- Architects of Holocaust: Heinrich Himmler, head of SS
- prisoners on prisoners so that Germans did not have to do the dirty work
12
Q
T4 program
A
- this is where they experimented on the mentally and physically disabled
- 1939: combination of the judiciary and the medical fields start identifying who has facial defects, the start of this indoctrination
- Dec 1939: in their newly conquered territories, clearing out asylums and shooting/killing the patients
- there were also public outcrys that started happening against the crime, started hiding it better
- driven by this want of just having the “Aryan race” in Germany, eugenics, racially pure state
13
Q
social death of the German Jews
A
- how the Nazis were able to make 50,000 Jews disappear from society
- this made it easier on the rest of the population to forget about them
- removal from the workplace, schools, public places, etc.
- Germans were more open to this policy as it benefited them; premise of them being take to camp themselves, self-interested through business opportunities, Hitler also started youth camps for the younger generation
14
Q
self policing society
A
- aspects of terror/ surveillance/fear
- would tell on their own neighbors and people would rat each other out if thought they were hiding Jews, etc.
15
Q
Ghettos
A
- were not in Germany, were only in Poland a majority
- the first one in 1939 was in Warsaw, Poland
- also had Jewish Councils that were “leaders”
- very dirty conditions, also started becoming place would go before going to the camp
- there were some forms of culture and resistance like Warsaw Uprising of 1944
16
Q
aftermath of the holocaust (stage 6 of the holocaust)
A
- diaspora
- trials
- lemkin
- UN Declaration of Human Rights of Dec 10, 1948
- Genova Convention
- Education
- Memorialization
- medical ethics code
- idea of never going it again
- holocaust denial
- victim testimony
17
Q
- diaspora (movement of the Jews)
A
- were not considered DPs (displaced prisoners), didn’t really have a real home anymore
- was the UN Relief & Rehabilitation Program that tried to help and sent up these camps
- some Jews went back to Poland were they were subjugated y another pogrom
- some Jews tried to go home to where they were originally from and found it not easy to reclaim their property and that it was occupied or their business
- after a striking loss of Jews & them feeling unsafe in Europe, in 1948, Israel was founded
18
Q
Trials
A
- international military tribunal included the Nuremberg Trials which prosecuted quite a few top Nazi officials that could find and were still alive
- the four major crimes were: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit these crimes
- some notable officials were Hermann Goring (head of Lutwaffe), Rudolf Hess (Hitler’s deputy) that were prosecuting
- some received a lighter sentence than expected, for some there was a lack of direct evidence so couldn’t punish as harshly
- many of the lower Nazi officials escaped facing justice
- “Grey area” where some Nazi prosecution or were jsut not held accountable by escaping to countries in South America, like in Argentina like Adolf Eichmann
19
Q
Adolf Eichmann
A
Eichmann played a crucial role in organizing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps. After the war, he fled to Argentina, where he lived under a false identity for over a decade before being captured by Israeli agents in 1960. Eichmann was subsequently tried in Israel and executed in 1962 for his crimes against humanity.
20
Q
UN & Lemkin
A
- UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (common standard for human rights of all people)
- Lemkin (coined the term genocide, father of the genocide convention and lobbied for it and it passed in the UN in 1948)
- Geneva Conventions: series of international treaties that establish standards for humanitarian treatment of individuals during armed conflict
21
Q
Education
A
- there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this
- created a whole new area of study just around the Holocaust (from literature to scholars)
- was even the birth of the genocide studies
22
Q
idea of never again
A
- does it never happen again in Germany?
- never again happen to the Jews?
- never again is a genocide going to the Jews?
- never again in regards to Israel for the Jews?
23
Q
memorialization
A
- camps like AB still exist today
- Nazi did try to cover some of the camps with trees and flowers to cover up some of their crimes
- saw at the end of “Zone of Interest” of AB
24
medical ethics code
- Nuremberg code: after what the Nazi doctors did to the patients with T4 and other tests, need to have patients' consent for experiments now
25
holocaust denial
- have it even during the Holocaust, hard for some people to fully grasp and process all of it
- when soldiers found these camps, they were in complete disbelief, had gotten beliefs but was so much to process, lots of Jews also died even after finding due to starvation and eating food after so long, destroyed their family
- case with David Irving who denied the Holocaust with Lipstaft; this was a landmark case and proved that anyone could be held liable for spreading false information/misinformation
26
conclusion
- reflect on the holocaust and victim standpoint and testimony
27
stage 2 of the holocaust
- Stage 2: WW2 - Indirect Destruction, Reservation, Ghettozation (1939 - 1940)
- 1939: Blitzkrief to invade Poland, started WW2, amrked start of the Holocaust in my opinion; there were many Ghettos that were opened with some important being in Warsaw and Lodz
- 1940: preoccupied with a lot of the war efforts with the invasion of the Low Countries, Norway, Denmark, and Battle of Britain where the Lutwaffe dropped bombs constantly for 6 months
28
stage 3 of the holocaust
- Stage 3: Onset of Killing, Mass Gassings and Shootings, 1941
- June 1941: when Operation Barbarossa started, when Hitler and Nazi invaded Russia and started, caused downfall
- 1941: Nazi regime closed off immigration to Jewish people that were trying to flee their land, concept of "big prison"
1941: Babi Yar (killed close to 35,000 in a town in Ukraine; after this Hitler realized that going to need to save bullets for the war so started to transition to gasing)
1941: Used Zyklon-B on POWs, the first gassing
29
stage 4 of the holocaust
Stage 4: Industrialized Mass Murder, 1942 - 1944
- turning point was Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) and D-Day where Allied invasion of Normandy forced them to fight on two fronts (1944)
- 1942: Wansee Conference (claimed it was here where high officials in Nazi decided on "The Final Solution" to murder all of the Jews, had already been beating them and overworking them in the camps/ghettos); this was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich who helped design it
- beg 1943: defeat of Germans at Stalingrad (2/3 of the Jews that are going to die have already died)
30
stage 5 of the holocaust
- Stage 5: Death Marches, Liberation, 1945
- end 1944 - 1945: germans had lost so much terriorities that they had to start evacuating
- hundresd of thousands of prisoners were marched from camp to camp and away from the front lines
- estimated that 250,000 - 375,000 died in these marches
- March 1944: German front collapsed
- April 20 1944: Hitler last public announcement
- April 28 1944: Hitler and his new bride committed suicide (big deal as he was driver and the face of the whole movement, there was also an unconditional surrender between the Allied powers like US, Russia, and UK
31
1. Adolf Hitler
Bio: Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and the primary architect of the Holocaust. His extreme anti-Semitic ideology and belief in Aryan racial superiority led to the implementation of policies that resulted in the systematic extermination of six million Jews and millions of others deemed undesirable.
32
Hermann Goring
Bio: Hermann Göring was a leading member of the Nazi Party, founder of the Gestapo, and head of the Luftwaffe. He was instrumental in the implementation of the Nazi regime's policies, including the T4 euthanasia program, which targeted the disabled and mentally ill, and played a significant role in the logistics of the Holocaust.
33
Heinrich Himmler
- head of SS and architect of the Holocaust
- Bio: Heinrich Himmler was one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany and the main architect of the Holocaust. As head of the SS (Schutzstaffel), he oversaw the implementation of mass extermination programs and the concentration camp system, where millions of Jews and others were murdered.
34
1. Joseph Goebbels
- minister of propaganda
- Bio: Joseph Goebbels was responsible for disseminating Nazi ideology and anti-Semitic propaganda. As Hitler's close associate, he used media, arts, and culture to promote the Nazi agenda, manipulate public opinion, and justify the persecution of Jews and other groups.
