The Holocaust
Definition: “the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany…”
The Holocaust can be divided into two main phases: 1933-1939 and 1939-1945.
I. 1933-1939
§ January 30, 1933 – Adolf Hitler named Chancellor of Germany
§ Hitler quickly moved to end German Democracy
§ Invoked emergency clauses of the Constitution that suspended freedoms of press, speech, and assembly
§ Used special security forces – Special State Police(Gestapo), Storm Troopers(SA), and Security Police(SS)- to murder or arrest leaders of opposition political parties
§ Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, gave dictatorial powers to Hitler
§ 1933 – Nazis put into practice their racial ideology – believed Germans were “racially superior”
§ Viewed Jews, Roma(Gypsies), and the handicapped as a threat to the purity of the “master race”
§ The principal target were the 600,000 Jews living in Germany
§ Defined Jews as a race and defined this race as “inferior”
§ Blamed Jews for Germany’s economic depression and defeat in WWI
§ 1933 – laws forced Jews to quit many jobs
§ 1933 – boycott of Jewish businesses was instituted
§ 1935 – “Nuremberg Laws” made Jews second-class citizens
§ Defined Jews by the religious affiliation of their grandparents
§ 1937-1939 – anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further: Jews could not attend public schools, go to theaters, cinemas, or vacation resorts, or walk or reside in certain areas of German cities
§ Between 1933 and 1939 about half the German-Jews and 2/3 of the Austrian Jews fled Nazi persecution
§ For those who stayed behind, the worst was yet to come.
II. 1939-1945
· September 1, 1939 – Germany invades Poland – WWII begins
· Polish leaders killed – German soldiers massacre university professors, artists, writers, politicians, and many Catholic priests.
· Many Jews imprisoned in concentration camps.
· Hitler issues order to kill institutionalized, handicapped patients deemed incurable.
· “euthanasia” program contained all the elements later required for mass murders of Jews and Gypsies in Nazi death camps.
· 1941 – Germany invades Russia – Jews and Gypsies killed in mass executions.
· Killings carried out by mobile killing squads at improvised sites – most famous was Babi Yar – 33,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered.
· Major changes in concentration camp system were developed.
· Ghettos, transit camps, and forced labor camps were set up to handle huge numbers of new prisoners.
· Most famous ghettos were in Warsaw and Lodz, Poland.
· Starvation, overcrowding, exposure to cold, and contagious disease killed thousands of people in the ghettos.
· Between 1942 and 1944, ghettos were eliminated and the residents were deported to “extermination camps” in Poland.
· These camps were equipped with gassing facilities for killing large numbers of people.
· This process became formal state policy in 1942, known as the “final solution of the Jewish question".
· The six death sites were Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.