the Holocaust Flashcards
1
Q
pre-war jewish life
A
- jewish people were largely indistinguishable from germans
- dressed similar to Christians
- jewish people participated in society through math, science, humanities, arts
- albert einstein was jewish
- yiddish language spoken in theatres, newspapers
- there was however long-stading anti-semitism in europe
2
Q
the different phases of the holocaust
A
- definition
- isolation
- emigration
- ghettoisation
- deportation
- mass murder
3
Q
phase 1: definition
A
- Jews are defined as the “other” or “inferior” through legalised discrimination
- Through racism: categorizing people into fixed categories based on (supposed) bloodlines.
- Through laws: The Nuremberg laws defined who was a Jew and who wasn’t
- Through propaganda: Cartoons, books, movies, and posters portrayed Jews as different from (and inferior to) their Aryan neighbours.
4
Q
phase 2: isolation
A
- Once individuals are labelled as Jews; they are separated from mainstream society.
- Through laws: Jews were not allowed to attend German schools or universities. They could not go to public parks or movie theatres. All German youth were obliged to join the Hitler Youth Movement; Jewish youth were excluded from membership.
- Through social practices: Many Germans stopped associating or “being friends” with Jews. Jews and non-Jewish Germans were not allowed to join the same clubs.
- Through the economy: Jews were excluded from the civil service and Jewish businesses were taken over by Germans. Jewish doctors and lawyers had their licenses taken away. This made it less likely for Germans to interact with Jews in their daily life.
5
Q
phase 3: emigration
A
- Jews are encouraged to leave Germany. With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the Nazis apply their racial laws to the countries they invade and occupy. Thus, Jews in these territories also tried to emigrate outside of the Third Reich (german empire)
- Through discriminatory laws: Many Jews, especially artists and academics, left Germany when they were no longer allowed to work in the universities.
- Through new immigration laws: Jews were allowed to obtain exit visas so long as they left behind their valuables and property.
- Through fear: Kristallnacht (9-10 Nov 1938) encouraged many Jews to leave the area.
6
Q
phase 4: ghettoisation
A
- Jews are forcibly removed to segregated sections of Eastern European cities called ghettos.
- Ghettos were walled-off areas of a city where Jews were forced to live. They were not allowed to leave their ghetto without permission from Nazi officials. Likewise, except for Nazi officials, non-Jews were not allowed to enter the ghetto.
- Conditions in the ghettos were crowded and filthy. Many families were forced to share one small apartment. There was limited access to proper waste disposal. Jews had to give up their property and valuables. There were very few jobs in a ghetto and since everyone had to give up their property and valuables, most of the residents were extremely poor. Food was scarce. Forced, unpaid labour was common.
7
Q
phase 5: deportation
A
- Jews are transported from ghettos to concentration camps and death camps.
- The Nazis built the first concentration camp in 1933 as a place to detain (place-by force) communists and other opponents to the Nazi Party. At the beginning of World War II, the Nazis began building more concentration camps where they could imprison “enemies of the state,” including Jews, Roma, and homosexuals, as well as prisoners or war. Many concentration camps functioned as labour camps, where inmates worked until they either starved to death or died of disease.
- Death camps, also called extermination camps, were designed for the purpose of killing large numbers of people in the most efficient manner possible, such as Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Because these camps were located away from major cities, victims had to be transported to them via train. Some rides lasted for several days. Thousands of prisoners died on route to the camps.
8
Q
phase 6: mass murder
A
- This was the final phase of the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’. Mass murder of Jewish people, as well as others deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘inferior’ by the Nazis.
- It is estimated that the Nazis murdered approximately 11 million innocent civilians during World War II. These are civilians killed not in the crossfire of armed combat but murdered for being an “enemy of the state” or for belonging to an undesirable group.
- The Nazis and those who worked for them killed children, women, and men mostly through shooting, suffocation in gas chambers, and imprisonment in labour and death camps.
- Conditions in the camps were such that many prisoners died from disease, such as typhus, malnutrition, and exhaustion from overwork. Of those killed, six million were Jews. Two-thirds of the entire European Jewish population was killed by the Nazis.
9
Q
what was the holocaust
A
- The Holocaust was the systematic, state-engineered genocide of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its collaborators
- resulted in the murder of approximately six million Jewish people, including one and a half million children.
- At the same time, other groups were persecuted by the Nazi regime and their collaborators.
10
Q
what is antisemitism
A
‘Antisemitism’ means prejudice against or can be expressed as hatred of Jews.
11
Q
how did Nuremberg laws promote antisemitism
A
Nuremberg laws:
- On September 15, 1935, the Nazi regime announced two new laws:
- The Reich Citizenship Law
- Jews, defined as a separate race, could not be full citizens of Germany
- They had no political rights.
- The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
- banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people of German or related blood
- The Reich Citizenship Law
- These laws informally became known as the Nuremberg Laws
- consequences of the laws:
- made Jews legally different from their non-Jewish neighbours
- isolated and excluding Jews from the rest of German society
12
Q
how did propaganda promote antisemitism
A
Propaganda:
- propaganda was led by Joseph Goebbels
- produced propaganda content like posters, films radio broadcasts to promote and justify antisemitism
- nazi government purged the education system so that the curriculum was changed to focus on patriotic values
- dying for the fuhrer
- hatred of Jewish people
- helped shift people’s moral compass to a war footing
- helped them accept the mass murder of political opponents and racial minorities (enabling genocide like the holocaust to occur)
13
Q
what were the ghettos
A
sections of towns and cities that the German occupation authorities and their allies used to concentrate, exploit, and starve Jewish populations.
14
Q
purpose of the ghettos
A
- The creation of ghettos has historical roots in Europe and was a response to German territorial conquest, NOT designed to support life
- The Nazis were guided by their racial and antisemetic ideology of the Jews
- Want to establish a new order in Europe
- Separated the Jews from the remainder of the population by creating ghettos
15
Q
conditions of the ghetto
A
- Forced to live behind walls, fences and barbed wire
- Crowded areas
- Isolated and cut off from their livelihoods
- Suffered from hunger, disease and impoverishment
- Began in Eastern Europe in 1939-1941
- Jews were ordered in the ghettos to wear identifying badges or [armbands]
- Many Jews carried out [forced labor] for the German Reich.
- Nazi-appointed [Jewish councils] (Judenraete) administered daily life in the ghettos.
- A ghetto police force enforced the orders of the German authorities and the ordinances of the Jewish councils. This included facilitating [deportations to killing centers]
- Jewish police officials, like Jewish council members, served German authorities.
- The Germans did not hesitate to kill those Jewish policemen who were perceived to have failed to carry out orders.
- The creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe’s Jews.
- Jews were forced to move into the ghettos, where living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
