The Holocaust Flashcards
Hitler’s foreign policy goals
- Build a greater Germany
- Lebenstraum in east
- Rebuild the military
- Destroy the Versailles Treaty
- Destroy communism
Lebenstraum meaning
living space
Example of building a greater Germany
united all German speaking areas (Austria, Sudetenland)
Example of Lebenstraum
invaded Poland and Russia
Example of rebuilding the military
Luftwaffe Air Force and secret factories
Example of destroying the Versailles Treaty
annexed Austria
Example of destroying communism
Dachau for communists
Holocaust is a Greek word meaning…
sacrifice by fire
Different names and definitions of Holocaust
Historian Paul Bookbinder: complete destruction by burning.
Churchill called it crime without a name.
Now called genocide.
Genocide definition
acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Term created by Raphael Lemkim, Polish Jew survivor
Poland in Holocaust
Acquired for ruthless use in the Nazi war effort as a war resource. Germany regarded Polish pop as a supply of laborers. Polish teachers, priests, or central figures were especially targeted for immediate persecution. Bulk of country’s food sent to German home front.
Ghettos
2 million Polish Jews came under Nazi control, so Sept 1939 ghettos became marked off sections of town that served as basis for utilizing labor.
Work in the ghettos
Men and women 14-60 and children 12-14 worked 10-12 hours a day in factories. Unproductive Jews were shot first. Trolley lines ran through ghettos.
Life in the ghettos
Enclosed by fence, barbed wire and guarded. Overcrowding, starvation, diseases. Young took secret classes and smuggled food. Jews had to stay inside during curfew.
Warsaw ghetto
Largest ghetto. 350,000 Jews. 35% of city population in 2.4% of city area. July 22 1942: Warsaw Jews deported to Treblinka killing center. Only 55,000 Jews remained by Sept.
There were how many Jews in the Lodz ghetto?
160,000
Chelmno
first stationary kill center, opened in Poland Dec 8, 1941
How were people killed at Chelmno?
SS dressed as doctors ordered Jews to bathe before going to Germany for labor. Prisoners, undressed, gave up valuables, and were led onto a struck of 50-70 people in the cellar. Doors were sealed and mechanic attached tube to exhaust. Bodies driven to forest and put in graves.
How many were killed at Chelmno?
152,000 killed including 70,000 Jews and 5,000 Roma
Soviet Union
Nazis invaded Soviet Union on June 22, 1941
Einsatzgruppen
task forces or mobile Nazi death squads for mass killings. Moved behind army and killed Jews in occupied Soviet territory. Went directly into homes and communities, targeting Jewish men first. At first mass shootings, then gas vans. Residents helped Nazis by serving as auxiliary police.
Babi Yar (and who did the killing?)
ravine in Kiev Ukraine. 34,000 Jews murdered in 2 days. Executioners were ordinary men following orders, heavy drinking to ease burden
partisans
Jewish resistance fighters. By spring 1943, mobile squads had killed 1 million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans.
List the killing centers
Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzer, Auschwitz-Birkenau, , Majdonek-Lublin
killing centers vs. other camps.
Nazis called them extermination camps. Concentration and labor camps were not equipped with gassing facilities.
selection
Guards ordered deportees to get out and form lines, men separated from women and children. Officers pointed to left and right, victims unaware of this meant to live or die. Told they were showering, undress and turn over valuables, gassed.
Summer 1942
push to empty ghettos
Auschwitz
Largest extermination camp that opened on May 20, 1940. Concentration, forced labor, and extermination sections. Located near Krakow, Poland. More than 1 million people lost their lives. Sign over entrance read “work makes one free”
sonderkommando
Jews who moved bodies from gas chambers to incinerators
dehumanization and life in Auschwitz
Victims spared from death to work had identities taken: shaved heads, registration numbers tattooed on left forearms. Primitive barracks: no windows or insulation. Escape impossible: guards in watch towers, electrically charged barbed wire.
Josef Mengele
cruel medical experiments were conducted at Auschwitz by SS physician Dr. Josef Mengele. Carried out experimental treatments on dwarfs, twins, and younger children.
How were prisoners ID?
Jews were not the only group persecuted. Prisoners wore color coded triangles on jackets so guards could easily identify background. Letters indicated nationality, P=Poland and SU=Soviet Union
red
political prisoners, communists and socialists
green
common criminals
black
Roma gypsies and Germans considered asocial (unproductive)
purple
Jehovah’s witnesses
Euthanasia
1939: Hitler authorized the killing of those deemed unfit. Hospital staff started by neglecting patients. Consultants sent patients to gassing stations as part of the “Euthanasia Program” or T-4 Program, which required cooperation of many doctors. Doomed patients transferred to gas chambers or children were injected with overdose or starved.
About how many handicapped people were murdered between 1940-1945?
200,000
Wannsee Conference
Jan 20, 1942: 15 Nazi Party and German government leaders met in Berlin at the Wannsee Conference. Reinhard Heydrich, head deputy of Himmler’s SS, held the meeting to discuss the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.” Conference was where final solution was revealed to non Nazi leaders that would help arrange for Jews to be deported.
Final Solution
Nazi code name for the destruction or genocide of all European Jews
Death marches
At the end of WWII as the Nazi army collapsed, Germans frantically removed prisoners to labor camps inside Germany. Prisoners taken on trains and then by foot by death marches: long distances with no food, water, or rest. Those who couldn’t keep up were shot. Some driven into water and shot. Longest marches in winters of 1944-1945 as Soviets liberated Poland. Prisoners reach a destination and are put on freight trains and shipped to camps in Germany.
death march from Auschwitz
Jan 18 1945: death marches from Auschwitz began with 60,000 forced to march and over 15,000 died.
Six stages
Defintion Isolation Emigration Ghettoization Deportation Mass Murder
Definition examples
race science, Nuremburg laws, propaganda,
Isolation examples
Nuremburg Laws, civil service law, Hitler youth, explosion from schools
emigration examples
1/3 of German Jews left when Hitler came to power. Couldn’t leave after Kristallnacht. Evian Conference met about refugees but only DR opened. $1500 visa when they could only leave with $10. Voyage of St. Louis = difficult.
ghettoization examples
Warsaw ghetto. Overcrowding, starvation. Children smugglers and secret classes. Guards, barbed wire, curfews. Forced labor. Judenrat.
Deportation examples
death marches, overcrowded cattle cars, deals with railroad companies to move Jews from ghettos in trains, summer 1942 push to empty ghettos.
Mass murder examples
death camps, Auschwitz, gas chambers, death marches, euthanasia, Einsatzgruppen
Reserve Police Battalion 1
Major Trapp gave soldiers the option to opt out of killing the Jews.
uprising in Warsaw ghetto
ZOB Jewish fighting organization. fought back against deportations, SS destroyed Jewish residences, Jews hid from patrols and escaped at night.
The White Rose
anti Nazi campaign led by students and professor, distributed pamphlets
milk can
diaries, posters, documents, papers placed in milk cans and metal boxes and buries to preserve history
Bielski partisans
Recruited Jews to protect lives in the forest but also fight back
