The Holocaust Flashcards
What is anti-semitism?
Anti-Semitism, which is the hatred of Jewish people, had been common in Europe since the Middle Ages, and was especially strong in the 19th century.
What did Hitler accuse the Jews of?
Hitler appealed to this anti-Semitism by blaming the Jewish people for Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Nazi race-scientists incorrectly claimed that the Jewish people were sub-human.
What did Hitler do when he came to power?
As soon as Hitler came to power he introduced a programme of persecution. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) deprived Jewish people of many of their civil rights. On 9 November 1938, Kristallnacht or the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ took place. Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes were attacked and destroyed. This was a response to the assassination of a German diplomat by a Polish Jewish man in Paris.
What happened to Jews at the outbreak of WWII?
After the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, the Nazis stepped up the persecution of the Jewish people:
They were herded into over-crowded ‘ghettos’
How many people died during the holocaust?
Nobody knows how many Jewish people died during the Holocaust, but the usual figure given is 6 million.
What was the final solution?
In 1942, a Nazi conference at Wannsee decided on the ‘Final Solution’ – the Jewish people were to be systematically taken to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and gassed.
What was einsatzgruppen?
After 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazi death-squads, called ‘einsatzgruppen’, murdered more than a million Jewish people in eastern Europe
What did persecution of the Jews lead to?
During the Second World War, Nazi persecution of the Jewish people worsened into ‘genocide’ – the attempt to kill all the Jewish people in Europe.
Concentration camps employed slave labour and Jews were gassed.
Apart from Jews who else was persecuted?
Exterminated half a million Roma gypsies
put a quarter of a million mentally ill and disabled people to death
sterilised deaf people
imprisoned homosexuals
considered that Slavic people were sub-human and intended to starve up to 30 million Soviet civilians and prisoners of war
How did Jewish people react to what was happening?
in some places, the Jewish people resisted, eg the Warsaw Uprising of 1943
some of them fled from Germany and other countries such as Poland.
Some put their children on Kindertransport trains, which took them to Great Britain, where they were fostered
some hid
in some places, the Jewish people accepted their fate and even cooperated with the Nazis
some survived the concentration camps, often against all odds
What happened to Nazi leaders after the war?
After the war, Nazi leaders were put on trial at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials (1945‒1946). Many were sentenced to death. War criminals continued to be found and put on trial, including high profile cases such as Adolf Eichmann in 1960 and Klaus Barbie who was put on trial in 1987. It is universally believed that such a genocide must never be allowed to happen again.
What happened in 1948 to give Jewish people a home?
In 1948, the nation of Israel was established as a state for Jewish people.
What was the Hitler youth?
Educated in Nazi beliefs
Wore uniforms
Had 4M members in 1936
