the holocaust unit 4 Flashcards
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why were the jewish people seen as an obstacle to lebensraum
They were “hogging” lebensraum that could be used for the Nazi German populace, they were subhuman and didn’t deserve it in the eyes of the Nazis
characteristics of the aryan race
essentially a superior mythical German race which consisted of those with pure German blood characteristics included being blue eyed blonde athletic and tall
Nazi views towards the jewish
the Nazis defined the Jewish people as a race instead of a religion, therefore included those who didn’t practice Judaism, they believed that the “Jewish race” was a parasite and dangerous to others “who wanted to destroy the Aryan race”, they used eugenic like theories and doctors + scientist to prove their theories true this led to higher degree of antisemitism towards Jewish people being developed
aims of volksgemeinschaft
to create a united and harmonious community of racially pure Germans to increase the no. of and health of racially pure germans
- Impact of Nuremberg Laws
Impact of Nuremberg Laws:
* These laws made daily life of a Jewish person in Germany legally different from their non-Jewish neighbors. More laws would be introduced
later, and future laws would rely on the Nuremberg laws definition of “Jew”.
* Jewish people no longer classified as a citizen, therefore no longer have rights or access to government services.
Nuremberg Laws
September 15, 1935, the Nazi regime announced two new laws known as
the Nuremberg Laws:
* The Reich Citizenship Law
* The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
Reich Citizenship Law
* This law defined a citizen as a person who is “of German or related blood.”
* This meant that Jews, defined as a separate race, could not be full citizens of Germany. They had no political rights and only Germans would
be allowed to hold German citizenship.
The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
* a law against race-mixing or “race defilement”.
* It banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people “of German or related blood.” The Nazis believed race mixing
was dangerous to the purity of the German race as it could lead to ‘mixed race’ children.
Role of Josef Goebbels
Josef Goebbels takes this position and
has the important job of increasing support for the Nazi Party and indoctrinate Germans through
propaganda.+ he also was responsible for deaths of 100,000’s of people via concentration camps or murders
Types of propaganda
Main mediums of spreading propaganda: Posters, Films, Cartoons, Games, Radio.
Der Stürmer = Nazi propaganda newspaper est. 1924, led by Julius Streicher
* Spread “news” and rumours with anti-Semitic tilt = Blood libels; Jewish sex offences etc.
* Targeted at working class with sensationalist stories – Hitler saw Propaganda as a way to talk to
the common man on the street and change their heart and mind about Jewish people.
* Often carried tagline “Die Juden sind unser Unglück! (The Jews are our misfortune!)”
Propaganda in children’s education
* Spread into children’s books = children taught anti-Semitic history = next gen & younger = easier to manipulate →
change society.
* Textbooks – Giftpilz (The Poisonous Toadstool) focusing on the dangerous nature of Jews through
illustrations
* Influence vulnerable minds
Propaganda linked Jews & Communism together – two main enemies of Germany and reenforced
stereotypes that they were greedy and money hungry.
not only that freedom of speech was censored so nobody could speak out against it
Stereotypes promoted in anti-Semitic Propaganda
Laws introduced to remove of ‘bad’ hygiene from German society
Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
* Forced sterilization of Germans with ‘hereditary’ conditions
* Schizophrenia; manic-depression; genetic epilepsy, blindness + deafness; physical deformities; alcoholism +
“feeblemindedness”
* By 1939: 400,000 German had been forcibly sterilized
LGBTQIA+ community (particularly gay men) = attacked by Nazis, seen as ‘degenerate’ + ‘hereditarily ill’
* Nazis believed LGBTQI ppl = threat to Aryan race because refused to reproduce or live a ‘normal’ family life
* 1933: creation of ‘Pink Lists’ → banning of all LGBTQ groups + clubs
* LGBTQI people stripped of civil rights = 53,400 convicted + imprisoned → torture + death of 1000s
* 1935: homosexual male relationships = banned → 5,000 - 15,000 gay men sent to Concentration Camps
1939: Secret “Aktion T-4” Euthanasia Program = ‘Euthanising’ of mentally + physically disabled
* Midwives + doctors = required to register children up to age of three with mental or physical disabilities
* Panel of three medical experts made a determination about whether the child would live
* Estimated 10,000 physically + mentally disabled children = murdered
* 1940: program extended to targeted older children + adult residents of welfare institutions + asylum inmates
* Medical personnel falsified records to hide the program informing families loved one died due to natural causes.
The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
* a law against race-mixing or “race defilement”.
* It banned future intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people “of German or related blood.” The Nazis believed race mixing
was dangerous to the purity of the German race as it could lead to ‘mixed race’ children
Laws introduced to maintain‘good’ hygiene in German society
Law for The Encouragement of Marriage
* Newly married received government loan of 1000 marks (9 month income) → 800,000 newly weds taking up offer
* Birth of a child reduction of -25% of loan, 2 children - 50%, 4 children = loan cleared
* Motherhood Cross awarded to women with many children (Gold = 8 children, Silver = 6, Bronze = 4)
* 1933-1939: no. of female workers in industry declined from 29% - 25%
* No. of female high school graduates who could go to university = limited to 10% of number of males
* Classes for girls in schools emphasised domestic skills → good wives + mothers. The primary role of women now
would be = birth + raise children to strengthen Volksgemeinschaft.
New restrictions placed on contraception + abortions
* Nazi propaganda: abortion is a “crime against the body and the state”
* 1932: 34,698 approved abortions → 1935-40: 9,701 approvals
* Abortion = legal + encouraged if the child was disabled or mother was non-Aryan
* Nov 1938: Court ruled abortion should be legal + freely available for all Jewish women.
* 1935: Lebensborn (“well being of life”) program = encouraged women to have children with SS + give up babies for
adoption
* Lebensborn houses set up across Germany → mothers gave birth secretly = avoid stigma
* 8,000 children in Lebensborn houses fostered out to SS families
Cause of Kristallnacht
7th November 1938: German born Jewish man Herschel Grynszpan, entered the German embassy in Paris and murdered the
ambassador, Ernst vom Rath. Herschel supposedly did this due to the discrimination his family was facing in Germany.
The murder of Rath will now lead to the Nazi government using this opportunity to seek justice causing the kristallnacht
Impact of Kristallnacht
Jews blamed for event:
* Nazi’s imposed a collective fine of $400 million (in 1938 rates).
* Confiscation of all insurance payout to Jews whose shops or homes destroyed.
Jewish communities in Germany, Australia, Sudetenland were heavily impacted:
* 7500 shops/business destroyed or damaged
* 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps
* Approx. 100 Jews killed
Many Jews began to plan an escape from their native land as they realise it will only intensify.
Emigration for the Jewish community of Germany was difficult. Some families were successful in this despite the tough conditions
they faced in finding safety elsewhere.
Approximately 120,000 Jews left Germany between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of the Second World War. Many fleeing to other
European countries which would be later occupied leading to them being rounded up deported to their deaths. As many other countries at this time also had hatred of jewish people and didn’t let them in
Laws introduced late 1938 that impacted Jewish people
- 1936: Jewish teachers banned from working state schools
- July 1938: Jewish doctors banned from treating non-Jewish patients
- August 1938: Laws introduced stating Jews can only be given specific Jewish first names. New Jewish parents must
choose from a government approved list. All Jews who had ‘non-Jewish’ first names to adopt the middle name ‘Sara’ or
‘Israel’ - October 1938: All Jewish property given to non-Jewish people.
- October 1938: Invalidation of German passports of all German Jews. Passports validated again once stamped with a ‘J’.
- September 1941: All Jews in Nazi Germany are required to be identifiable. Jewish people were required to wear a special
yellow badge in public. Badge must be palm sized, yellow pointed start outlining the Star of David with ‘Jude’ (Jew) in the
middle. Must be strictly visible at all times. This order applies to all German Jews (as defined by the Nuremberg Laws)
who are six years old and older. In the same year Jewish inhabitants began being moved into ghettos.
Madagascar Plan
Why ghettos were established
As a result of their antisemitic ideology, following the invasion of Poland the Nazis developed ghettos to segregate and
control Jews and detain them from the rest of the population.
The Nazis also introduced ghettos due to their false theories that Jews spread diseases and therefore should be segregated to
protect the rest of the population.
Purpose of the ghetto
Aims
1. Isolate Jews from non-Jews as they are dangerous due to the belief Jews spread disease.
2. Control & segregate Jews – show Aryans as superior
3. Progression of persecution – dehumanize Jews and hope they die out in Ghetto
Different types of ghetto
three Key Types: Open Ghetto, Destruction Ghetto and Closed Ghetto = Most ghettos would become closed
-Closed Ghetto = This was the most common type of ghetto
* Closed off by walls; barbed wire; armed guards
* Crowded & unsanitary
* Repeated outbreak of illnesses
* Those seen outside = murdered on sight
* Most ghettos
Small acts of resistance in the ghetto
Small acts of resistance such as ‘illegal activities’
* Food smuggling into ghetto / sneaking out of ghetto to get extra food (mainly young
children)
* Weapon smuggling = resistance groups
* Jewish schools for children
* Holding cultural events
* Orchestra
* Plays
* Religious services
.when working to make german ammunitions for war e.g: tanks they sabotaged them so they wouldnt work or explode when operated
- Living conditions in ghettos.
Severely cramped living conditions:
* Odrzywol = 700 living in area previously occupied by five families
Starvation & disease
* In first year of ghettos, greatest physical danger was starvation & disease (X Nazi violence)
* Insufficient housing, shelter, water + sewage facilities led to illnesses
* Lodz = 43,000 ‘natural’ deaths by July 1942
* Meals = low quality & quantity – watery soups, some brewed with few beans or grains / straw or grass
* Warsaw = daily Jewish food ration – 186 calories (Ger soldiers – 2,600)
* The whole ghetto was designed,actually, to starve the people out. —Leo Schneiderman, survivor of Lodz Ghetto
* Many children became orphaned and often living on the streets.
No autonomy/freedom
* Forced to wear ID badges/armbands (Star of David)
* Isolated & dehumanized
* Schooling/ Education forbidden
* Performed forced labour:
* Supporting Nazi war effort
* No pay & dangerous & physically exhausting however they may receive extra ration
* Work often also offered a chance to escape the ghetto walls, which gave workers additional chances to smuggle in
extra food or rationed material, although this also heightened their risk of being caught and punished.
Experience in the Warsaw ghetto (4 points)
The largest Ghetto in Poland:
* A closed ghetto with an estimated to be over 450,000 Jews in 1.3 sq miles = 85,000 children under 14
* Anyone caught outside = shot on sight
Living conditions:
* Eight – Ten on average per room
* Could only bring bedding + personal belongings
* Possessions = stolen by German soldiers
* 300 - 800 calories p/d (Ger = 2,310) → illegal food smuggling
* rations consisted of bread, potatoes, and ersatz fat. In attempts to supplement their diets, ghetto inhabitants
organised a thriving black market where goods could be exchanged for food.
* Children often wriggled through the sewers to enter the city outside of the ghetto and sneak food back in.
Others paid off Nazi gate guards, and some even climbed the 10ft wall.
* Unheated rooms in Winter = hypothermia
Experience in the Lodz Ghetto (4 points
. It was the second largest ghetto in the German-occupied areas.
wish people in Lodz faced similar treatment and living conditions (starvation, typhus) of those in the Warsaw ghetto.It was one of the ghettos with the most severely isolated and insulated from its surroundings and from other ghettos; nobody
could get in or out. It was also surrounded by a hostile German population and by numerous Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans
living in Poland), whose treatment of the Jews was no better than that of the Nazis. Therefore, trying to escape would be difficult
if not impossible in unfriendly territory.
In January 1942, deportations from Lodz to the Chelmno (killing centre) murder site began, where the Jews were murdered by
means of mobile gas vans (trucks with hermetically sealed compartments that serve as gas chambers).
During this one fateful week the Germans hunted down Jews considered unproductive – mainly young children under the age of
ten, the sick and the old. This aktion (became known as “The Sperre”/Gehsperre).
By the end of 1942 almost half of the Jews interned in Lodz had been murdered in Chelmno. Subsequently, the ghetto became
predominantly a labor camp. At this stage, forced labor was no longer just a means to fight hunger; it had become a temporary
means of avoiding deportations
Who are the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS, the most elite nazi’s of nazi’s mobile death squads with the role to eliminate undesirables in conquered land left
behind by Germany army, including Jews who were rounded up into ghettos and driven eastwards
= 3,000 extreme Nazi’s special SS members
Supported by 11,000 German ‘Police’ units=thugs
Skull on cap to signify killing squad
* Assassinated Jews & put in mass graves
* Often supported by locals in massacres
- Einsatzgruppen as perpetrators in Babi Yar massacre
- Ukrainians as perpetrators at Babi Yar massacre
Ukrainian ‘police’:
* Support from Ukrainian nationalist militias, press and members of the auxiliary police
force contributed to rampant antisemitic violence in the early days of the Nazi invasion.
* Ukrainian prisoners recruited from a nearby prisoner-of-war camp were recruited to serve
the Nazi’s as local police.
* There job was to serve the Nazis, including rounding Jewish people together, robbing
Jews of their money, possessions and documents.
* They made the Jews wait in the meadow, from where, behind a mound of earth, they
could hear the relentless sound of machine gun fire.
as well as Ukranianian citizens who ensured that jewish people couldnt escape, rounded them up and stole their possesions
Events of Babi Yar massacre.
September 28th police put a notice was posted arounds cities and suburbs ordering all Jewish residents to appear at an
intersection in the cities Lukianivka district with all of their documents, money, valuables and warm clothing.
30,000 Jews arrived to be relocated – Germany expected 5-6,000
Jews were forced to march in columns to cordoned off area:
* Once in area = no escape (guards on gates)
* Forced to undress and place ‘valuables’ in certain areas
* Once undressed – led to the ravine 15m deep at least
* Direction pointed out by Ukrainians & Ger soldiers
* Jews – could not see what was going to happen until too late
* See pit of dead bodies – could not run – many gave up
* The Jewish infants, children, women and men were ordered to lie down – on already dead bodies – await
fate
* Shot with a machine gun – (Einsatzgruppen)
* Not everyone died straight away
* Einsatzgruppen soldier – stood on corpses
* Shot those ‘moaning’ to ensure death
* Local police/population (Ukrainians) – loaded trucks with the Jews’ belongings.
This murdering process continued for two days – bodies later covered with mud to hide the murder
29th
-30th Sept = 33,771 Jews assassinated (Einsatzgruppen left, but local police continued massacre until early October)
How were Jewish people deceived.
“All the Yids of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday September 29, 1941 by 8 a.m. at the corner of Melnikova and
Dokhterivskaya streets (next to the cemetery). Bring documents, money and valuables, and also warm clothing, bed linen etc. Any Yids who
do not follow this order and are found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilians who enter the dwellings left by Yids and appropriate the things in
them will be shot”.
essentially they told them to bring 2 weeks of valuables this made them think that they were being relocated instead of getting massacred
Why did ordinary Ukrainians welcome Nazi Invasion.
Ukraine was forced into being part of the USSR after a failed struggle for independence in the 1920s.
* This led to many ordinary Ukrainians welcoming Nazi invasion in September 1941 as they had been treated
harshly e.g. during collectivization 1932-1934 4.5 million Ukrainians died as a result of famine.
* Stalin was responsible for this and therefore some saw Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression.
