The Holocaust

Question 1

How many Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust?

Answer 1

About 6 million.

Question 2

About how many people in total were killed by the Nazis?

Answer 2

About 17 million.

Question 3

How did the expansion of Nazi Germany borders affect the Jews?

Answer 3

• Jews in the conquered territories became victims of Nazi persecution, humiliation, oppression and brutality.
• By 1939 Nazi had removed all basic rights from Jews.
• Thousands of concentration camps had been created by 1945.

Question 4

Define ghetto

Answer 4

A street, or quarter, of a city set apart as a legally enforced residence area for Jews

Question 5

Describe the conditions in a ghetto.

Answer 5

• The Jews tried to maintain balance of a normal life
• Conditions were terrible
• Jewish people were forced to work as slave labour
• During World War 2 when the Nazis would take over a European city, they would force all Jews into an area of town = called a ghetto & was fenced in with barbed wire and guarded.
• Little food, water, or medicine available.
• It was also very crowded with multiple families sometimes sharing a single room to live in.
• Jews were driven out of their homes and forced
  to live in ghettos.
• If a Jew tried to escape, they could be shot.
• Nazis closed all ghetto schools – illegal school
  was organized.
• Death: starvation, disease, random killings.
• There was an uprising – it was unsuccessful with
  limited resources.

Question 6

Describe the conditions in the WARSAW ghetto.

Answer 6

- Cramped and overpopulated/ lack
of housing
- Lack of privacy
- Not enough food, water
- Not allowed to practice religion, attend school or leave the ghetto
- Used as slave labour

Question 7

Define deportation

Answer 7

The action of deporting a foreigner from a

country.

Question 8

Describe the process of deportation.

Answer 8

The Jews were put onto cattle trucks & transported by rail without food/water/ a place to relieve themselves to
concentration camps.

Question 9

Define the Holocaust.

Answer 9

The deliberate, systematic, planned murder of the Jews of Europe.

Question 10

Who were the Einsatzgruppen?

Answer 10

Special mobile killing squads under the command of the SS that were instructed to go into towns to murder those whom the Nazis viewed as enemies of the state.

Question 11

Describe the “Final Solution”.

Answer 11

• Mass murder of Jews
• Nazis decided that murder on a mass scale needs to be more efficient and impersonal.
• Death camps were with gas facilities for mass murder were created.
• 6 death camps in Poland
• Jews from all over occupied Europe brought by rail. Many died in transit.
• On arrival a Selection process took place.
• Those selected for slave labour were worked to death.
• Those sent to the gas chamber were stripped of all belongings and gassed.

Question 12

What gas was used in the gas chambers?

Answer 12

Zykon B or Carbon Monoxide.

15 minutes – everyone was dead.

Question 13

What happened after everyone in the gas chambers were dead?

Answer 13

• Some Jewish prisoners were then sent to salvage anything of value from the corpses.
• Bodies were burnt and ash used as fertilizers.

Question 14

How did the Nazis destroy all evidence of the Holocaust?

Answer 14

• Nazis start destroying evidence of Auschwitz by:
  = Burying evidence in huge pits and covering with grass.
  = Emptying of warehouses -> shipping contents back to Germany
• January 1945 - they removed the last prisoners from Auschwitz & sent them on death marches -> march the prisoners to camps closer / within Germany.
• January 27, 1945 - Russians reached Auschwitz -> found 7 650 prisoners who had been left behind
• The camp was liberated; the prisoners were free

Question 15

Define liberation

Answer 15

Freeing of Jews and creating of equal rights for everyone.