What are your initial reactions to yesterday’s lesson? What was new to you? What surprised you? Why?

Armed resistance, most forceful formArmed uprising in over 100 ghettosWarsaw – April – May 1943

Armed revolt, rumors they were to be deported to killing center

Members of the Jewish Fighting Organization attacked tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, handful of small arms

Took only a few days to stop attacks, but almost a month to round everyone up and deport

Resistance (cont.’d)Escape from the ghettos into the forestJoined Soviet partisan units or formed their

own – harassed GermansSome Jewish council members refused to

comply with ordersAid and rescueSpiritual resistance – attempts to preserve

history and communal lifeJewish Cultural Institutions, observe religious

holidays and rituals, clandestine education, underground newspapers, hidden documentation

Resistance (cont,’d)Prisoner uprisings – Treblinka and Sobibor –

1943Stolen weapons attacked SS staff and guardsSome escaped, most were hunted and

capturedAuschwitz – mutiny against SS guards,

women on outside had been supplying explosives to blow up crematorium

1933-1945 Nazi Germany established about 20,000 camps to imprison its victims

Different purposes – forced-labor, transit, extermination

Purpose was to eliminate “enemies of the state”

In the beginning prisoners were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses or homosexuals

Called concentration camps because ppl were concentrated in one location

After invasion of Austria (1938), German and Austrian Jews were sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen – all in Germany

This is where men were sent after Kristallnacht

After invasion of Poland (1939) – Jews were sent to forced labor camps

After invasion of USSR (1941) Nazis built more POW camps

Used to facilitate the “Final Solution”Established in Poland – largest Jewish populationDesigned for efficient mass murder1st camp opened 1941 – Chelmno

Jews and Roma gassed in mobile gas vansGas chambers used Auschwitz had 4 chambers at Birkenau

At the height – 6,000 Jews killed dailyMore than 3 million Jews killed in extermination

campshttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en

&ModuleId=10005180&MediaId=1092

Conducted on camp prisoners without their consent3 types

In Dachau – conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety

Also, so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia.

Used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater potable.

Scientists tested immunization compounds and sera for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases – malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis

Ravensburg the site of bone-grafting experiments and experiments to test the efficacy of newly developed sulfa (sulfanilamide) drugs

Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, prisoners subjected to phosgene and mustard gas in order to test possible antidotes.

Sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of Nazi worldview

Most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz Conducted medical experiments on twins directed serological experiments on  Roma

Werner Fischer (Sachsenhausen) tried to determine how different "races" withstood various contagious diseases

The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish racial inferiority"

Squads composed of SS and police personnelTask – murder racial or political enemies

found behind German combat lines in USSRVictims – Jews, Roma, government officials,

disabled patientsDifferent than deportation to campsEinsatzgruppen came to the ppl and

massacred themhttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lan

g=en&ModuleId=10005130&MediaId=1131

Logistical support provided by German armySupplies, transportation, housing, guards

Identified by local interpreters, ppl rounded up and taken to collection points

Then marched or transported to execution site where trenches had been prepares

Sometimes had to dig their own gravesHanded over valuables, undressedShot standing in front of trench, or lying face

downPpl were buried in mass graves

Late summer 1941 called for more convenient mode of killing

Mobile gas chamber mounted on a truck – used carbon monoxide from truck to kill victims

By 1943 – mobile killing units had killed over a million Soviet Jews and ten of thousands of others

Final Solution – plan to annihilate the Jewish ppl

Persecution and segregation of Jews implemented in stagesLegislation, ghettos, mobile killing units,

campsCalled for the murder of all European Jews by

gassing, shooting or other means

1944, Germany began losing ground in USSR and began to evacuate prisoners

3 purposes:SS did not want prisoners to fall into enemy

hands and tell their storiesSS thought they needed prisoners to maintain

armamentsBelieved they may be able to use prisoners as

hostages to bargain for separate peace and ensure the continuation of Nazi regime

1944 evacuation began by train, but then increased to evacuations by foot

1945 Germany was on the verge of military defeat

SS ordered to kill prisoners who could no longer walk or travel

Guards brutally mistreated prisoners – shot ppl who collapsed or could no longer walk or disembark from trains or ships

Thousands died of exposure, starvation, exhaustion