Racial Policies

Question 1

Jewish Policy - before final solution/1942

Answer 1

• no uniform policy for dealing with the Jews

- Holocaust was driven by local initiatives

Question 2

Jewish Policy - The Ghettos

Answer 2

• their creation was random and non-uniform across Poland and other EU countries
• Ghettos had food, water and electricity shortages, as well as being overcrowded
• starvation, disease and dying of thirst were common
• In Warsaw a 1/3 of the population were housed in the ghetto which made up only 15% of the city’s housing stock

Question 3

Jewish Policy - Wannsee Conference

Answer 3

• January 1942
• more systematic approach for exterminating Jews was decided upon to replace the unorganised persecution and mass shootings

Question 4

Jewish Policy - Final Solution

Answer 4

• death camps created in Europe
• Untermenschen (non-Aryans) would be gassed
• Auschwitz was the most infamous camp
• gas chambers were built in death camps, as well as railways to deliver Jews
• Jews divided into those to be gassed and those who could work until they died or were gassed

Question 5

Jewish Policy - Final Solution’s impact

Answer 5

• after 1942 the majority of Jews were killed
• 40% of Jews were killed. by shootings, and the other 60% were killed by gassing
• 6.5 million Jews were killed in the final solution
• Russians, Poles, gypsies, political opponents and asocials were killed as well

Question 6

Untermenschen Policy - germanisation and eastern Europe

Answer 6

• untermenschen separated out and marked for persecution or slave labour
• Slavs, Serbs and Slovenes were seen by the Generalplan-Ost as untermenschen and fit for extermination
• Ethnic Germans from europeans countries were germanised
• adults resisting Germanisation from Poland, the USSR and Yugoslavia were executed

Question 7

Untermenschen Policy - Slovenia

Answer 7

• 46,000 Slovenes taken and used as slave labour for the war effort
• ethnic Germans were resettled on Slovenian land

Question 8

Untermenschen Policy - Serbia

Answer 8

• schools in Serbia were shut
• orthodox serbs were converted to Roman Catholicism
• Croatians massacred the Serbs

Question 9

Untermenschen Policy - Poland

Answer 9

• 60,000 Poles in leadership positions were killed
• the aim was to get rid of polish leadership before enslaving or killing the polish masses
• all Poles over 14 and Jews over 12 could be used as forced labour
• 2.9 million poles killed overall
• Germans were moved to be resettled in Poland