III. The Holocaust

A. The Holocaust Begins1. The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, depriving German Jews of their rights. In 1938, Nazis attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues in Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”).

“All the things for which my parents had worked for 18 long years were destroyed in less than 10 minutes. Piles of valuable glasses, expensive furniture, linens—in short,

everything was destroyed….The Nazis left us, yelling, ‘Don’t try to leave this house! We’ll soon be back again

and take you to a concentration camp to be shot.’”

-M.I. Libau, quoted in Never to Forget: The Jews

of the Holocaust

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A. The Holocaust Begins

2. By 1939, many German Jews fled to other countries as refugees. However, some of the Allies had restrictions on immigration.

*Hitler hoped emigration be the solution to the

“Jewish problem”*

A. The Holocaust Begins

3. The Nazis sent Jews into overcrowded ghettos, or segregated Jewish areas.

*Since emigration didn’t work, Hitler hoped Jews would die in the ghettos*

Life in the Ghetto: Warsaw, Poland

B. The “Final Solution”1. Hitler’s “Final Solution” called for the genocide of groups or races he deemed “inferior” and a threat to making a “pure” Aryan race.

*Besides Jews, the sick, disabled, mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Russians,

etc. were also included*

B. The “Final Solution”2. The SS hunted down Jews killing many and sending others to concentration camps where they were underfed, abused, and forced to work as slaves.

B. The “Final Solution”3. The “Final Solution” began in 1942 with the use of extermination camps with gas chambers meant to kill thousands daily. The “weak” were often killed first. Auschwitz was the largest camp.

Geography Minute

B. The “Final Solution”4. About 6 million European Jews died in death camps and in Nazi Massacres. Less than 4 million survived.

“Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke

beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my

soul and turned my dreams to dust…Never.

-Elie Wiesel, quoted in Night

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