The War Years. Prewar European Jewish Population: 9.5 million.
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Transcript of The War Years. Prewar European Jewish Population: 9.5 million.
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THE HOLOCAUST 1939-1945
The War Years
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Prewar European Jewish Population: 9.5 million
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By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three
European Jews
A pile of corpses at the Russian Camp section of the Mauthausen concentration camp after liberation. Mauthausen, Austria, May 5-
15, 1945
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The War Begins
After the German invasion of Poland (the beginning of WWII), anti-Jewish policy escalated to the imprisonment and eventual murder of European Jews
The Nazis searched for the swiftest way to destroy this hated people
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Ghettos
The Nazis first established ghettos, areas of a city (often enclosed) designed to isolate and control the Jews
A sign, in both German and Latvian, warning that people attempting to cross the fence or to contact inhabitants of the Riga ghetto will be shot.
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The first ghetto was established in Poland in 1939 Forced Jewish resettlement in ghettos began in 1940
Deportation of Jews from Hanau, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Hanau, Germany, May 30, 1942
Jews move into the Kovno ghetto. Lithuania, 1941-1942
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There they lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, working for long hours without pay and proper food to build roads, canals, bridges and railroads, and to staff factories
They were expected to die from disease and starvation
Child forced laborer in a ghetto factory. Kovno, Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944.
Children eating in the ghetto streets. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
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The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone
The largest ghetto in Poland was the Warsaw ghetto, where over 400,000 Jews were crowded into on area of 1.3 square miles
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Jewish Resistance In some ghettos, Jews resisted and staged armed uprisings The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising (April 19 –
May 16, 1943) Though German forces broke the organized military resistance
within a few days of the beginning of the uprising, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans for almost a month
Jewish resistance fighters captured during the Warsaw ghetto uprising
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the slow death by disease and starvation in the ghettos was not efficient enough for Hitler
The Germans either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them, usually by train, to killing centers where they were murdered
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Einsatzgruppen (Death Squads or Mobile Killing Units)
Squads made up of Nazi (SS) units and police, moved with speed on the heels of the advancing German army
Their job was to kill any Jews they could find in the occupied territory
They entered a town, rounded up all the Jews, marched them to the outskirts of the city
There, they shot them or gassed them in gas vans and dumped their bodies into mass graves
Yet even these methods appeared too insufficient to make Europe free of Jews
German soldiers look on as a member of an Einsatzgruppe prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling on the edge of a mass grave filled with corpses.
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The Final Solution
The Nazi solution was to order the systematic mass extermination of the Jewish people
In late 1941, Hitler gave his approval to the policy the Nazi leaders called the “Final Solution”
It began in 1942 Their instrument for this insane policy
was at hand – the SS organization, whose members were sworn to absolute obedience
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Extermination Camps
To facilitate the “Final Solution”, the Nazis established special camps in Poland
These were extermination camps, designed for efficient mass murder and organized like slaughterhouses for animals
The entire Jewish population was to be shipped by train in cattle cars to special camps in Polish territories
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The trains, arriving at the camps usually at night, poured out their loads of men, women, and children
On arrival, they were stripped of their clothes and valuables; their heads were shaved; and families were separated
The weak, the old, and the very young were sent immediately to the “showers” which spurted not water, but poisonous gas
The strong and healthy survived for a time to work as forced labourers, only to be killed in their turn
At the Auschwitz camp complex, the Birkenau extermination camp had 4 gas chambers. During the height of deportations to the camp, up to 6,000 Jews were gasses there each day
Interior view of a gas chamber, Mauthausen concentration camp
The door to the gas chamber in Dachau. It is marked “shower-bath.”
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All that was left were mountains of clothing, gold teeth, hair, and other items taken from the victims
Bales of the hair of female prisoners found in the warehouses of Auschwitz at the liberation.
View of a medical table used for removing gold teeth from prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Pile of prisoners clothing found near the crematorium in the Dauchau concentration camp.
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Approximately 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Postwar Jewish Population: 3.5 million
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THE AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST
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Jews Liberated
The survivors in the concentration camps were barely alive. The prisoners suffered from starvation and disease – and many thousands died in the first months after the liberation
Human remains of prisoners found near the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp
The Allied troops were met with a horrible sight when they arrived in the extermination and concentration camps in 1945: piles of dead bodies, human remains, and ashes.
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Letter written by Canadian soldier
Tonight I am a different man. I have spent the last two days in Belsen concentration camp, the most horrible festering scab there has ever been on the face of humanity. . . . It makes me sick to my stomach even to imagine the smell, and I want to weep. . . when I think of what they have done. . . .
You have seen pictures in the papers but they cannot tell the story. You have to smell it and feel it and keep a stern look on your face while you heart tears itself into pieces and tears of compassion drench your soul. . . .
I have seen hundreds of people dying before my eyes. I have seen filthy green corpses used as pillows for the living. I have seen forty thousand people living and dying amongst their own fetid offal. They are dying faster than they can be buried. For most of them food is absolutely of no use. Their stomachs will not take it. . . .
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Jews Homeless
Surviving Jews feared returning to their homes because of the antisemitism that persisted in parts of Europe
Some were without a home in a Europe destroyed by war
Tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors migrated westward to other European territories liberated by the western Allies
They were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and displaced persons (DP) camps
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The Nuremberg Trials The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was established in
1945 to prosecute war criminals The Tribunal was set up by the Allied great powers: The
United States, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France
View of the courtroom during a session of the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg
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The IMT tried 22 “major” war criminals for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity
The trials took place in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1946
The tribunal sentenced 12 of the accused to death by hanging, 3 were sentenced to life in prison
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The State of Israel
Some Jews wanted to return to their ancestral homeland in Palestine
In the midst of war with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, the Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948
The United States and the Soviet Union immediately recognized the new government
The State of Israel was created as a national home for the Jews
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The State of Israel
It was not to be the land of peace that they expected
The creation of the State of Israel greatly offended and hurt the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab countries
The resentment and conflict from this dispute has continued to the present