Part 2 Key Questions 1.How is the decision made and implemented to commit a European- wide genocide?...
-
Upload
constance-chapman -
Category
Documents
-
view
214 -
download
1
Transcript of Part 2 Key Questions 1.How is the decision made and implemented to commit a European- wide genocide?...
Part 2 Key Questions
1. How is the decision made and implemented to commit a European-wide genocide?
2. What were the major effects of WWII on American society including minorities and women?
A. Early Jewish Persecution• 1935 Nuremburg laws in Germany
stripped German Jews of citizenship and rights
• 1938 Kristellnacht Nazis unleashed wave of violence against Jews attacking them in their homes, synagogues and businesses
• Tens of thousands of European Jews fled for countries that would admit them
III. The Jewish Genocide
• Among them distinguished musicians, architects, writers, scholars who enriched the cultural life of their adopted nation
• Refugee physicists like Enrique Ferme contributed to developing the atomic bomb for the U.S.
• Discriminatory Immigration laws in place at time
• Congress refused to change the quotas for Jews• FDR would not exert pressure on lawmakers to
do so• Majority of Americans opposed letting in more
Jews (isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic sentiments)
B. America and the Jewish refugees
Jewish refugees on board MS St Louis in 1939
while docked in Havana, Cuba
Stopped by US Authorities and
forced to return to Europe
Video: Jewish Refugees – The
Roosevelts
C. The Jewish Genocide• Onset of the war accelerates the
process of elimination– Deportation of “undesirables” into
concentration camps– In Eastern Europe (esp. Poland) , forced
relocation of Jews into Ghettoes• Mandatory wearing of clothing to identify
them as Jews• Forced labor• Not allowed to leave• Hunger, fatigue, disease kill thousands of
Jews by month
Other Victims of the Holocaust
• Political opponents– Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats,
and trade union leaders
• Roma (Gypsies)– On racial grounds - Accused of being work-
shy/asocial, 1st victims of gas chambers
• Poles/Slavic peoples (considered racially inferior)
• Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, mentally + physically disabled
• Video: The Path to Nazi Genocide
Radicalization after USSR invasion
• German movement East places much larger Jewish population under Nazi control
• Einsatzgruppen follow troops and exterminate all racial and political enemies– 1 million people gunned down 1941-1943
• Method eventually considered too inefficient and wearing on assassins
First Extermination Camps Fall 1941
• Built in East (e.g. Belzec, Poland)• December 1st gassings occur in
Chelmno, Poland in trucks• Turning Point of conscious policy of
total extermination
CAMPS IN
EUROPE
1933 -1945
Mass Extermination
• The Final Solution– Genocide on European scale as of 1941–Made official at Wannsee Conference Jan
20, 1942– SS Reinhard Heydrich defines
administrative and practical methods to exterminate all Jews in Europe
– Physically capable Jews used in the German war effort, all others eliminated
– Gypsies sent to death camps from 1943
Planned and methodical organization
• 2 sorts of camps, overseen by the SS– Concentration Camps• Work camps created after 1933, • e.g. Dachau, stone quarry: Mauthausen
(Austria), chemical plant: Auschwitz• Conditions variable: death more or less
frequent from overwork, abuse, starvation• Detainees diverse, resistance members
progressively sent, some camps only female• Systematic treatment of humiliation to make
prisoners feel a loss of humanity
Death Camps
• In Poland– Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chalmno,
Majdanek, Sobibor & Treblinka
• Death organized in an industrial fashion• Populations throughout Europe
transported like animals in wagon cars– Apt workers separated from the weak who
are killed in gas chambers– Bodies burned or buried in communal graves– Detainees used as guinea pigs for medical
experiments under authority of doctors like Josef Mengele in Auschwitz
Outcome• 10 million people killed from Nazi
extermination policy• Jewish victims the most numerous: – 5.1 – 5.8 million deaths– Half the Jewish population in 1939– Gypsies suffer 240,000 deaths (1/3
population)
• Regions Unevenly affected– Extermination more systematic in the East– The Polish Jewish population decreased by
89% between 1939 and 1945
Local Reactions to Nazi Extermination Policy
• Occupied territories of Nazi Germany reacted differently– Local governments and civilian populations cooperated
differently depending on the country• Resistance of Danish & Swedish authorities and
populations saved Jewish population of the country• French collaboration (state and people) led to
extermination of 28% of Jewish population• Opposition of Finnish and Bulgarian governments (Nazi
allies) led to end of deporting their Jewish citizens to extermination camps
• Jewish populations resisted policies in some areas– Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Video: To Live and Die with Honor Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (4’45)• Video: Holocaust Survivor Barbara Steiner
Country Number of Deaths
% of Jewish population
exterminated
Germany 120,000 50%
Austria 50,000 83%
Belgium 24,000 27%
Estonia 2,000 44%
France 75,000 28%
Greece 60,000 81%
Hungary 180,000 45%
Italy 9,000 18%
Latvia 70,000 74%
Lithuania 130,000 90%
Norway 1,000 50%
The Netherlands 100,000 71%
Poland 3,000,000 89.5%
Romania 270,000 36%
Czechoslovakia 260,000 82.5%
USSR 700,000 23%
Yugoslavia 60,000 80%
Survivors of the Concentration Camp of Dachau celebrate their release
HOMEWORK
Reading MaterialMastering Modern World History
Part I. War and International Relations
Chapter 6 The Second World War, 1939-1945
Genocide (pp. 111-117)