Holocaust Review

HOLOCAUST
Holocaust: from Greek word Holokaustos
meaning a burnt sacrifice dedicated to God and
God alone.
Holocaust the event: event of massacre during
1935 1945 in which 2/3 of European Jews were
massacred
Now, the word refers to the destruction of Jews,
instead of the Greek derivation above and more
specifically the word refers to any great
destruction of people.

Artistic Responses
Including writings, photographs, paintings, etc.
Considered inadequate and insensitive by
survivors
When asked, survivors say that the most
appropriate response would have been to keep
silent for a period of time and let the people
recover.
Many people are of the opinion that unless you
lived through the Holocaust, you can never really
understand it.

Biblical References
The literature from this period is plagued with
references to the bible, because most of the
writing survivors were Jewish.
Specifically the books of Jeremiah &
Lamentations.
Anti-Semitism: hatred of the Jews

Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht: the night of broken glass
Jewish businesses and synagogues were
attacked by Nazis
Term refers to the glass of windows laying in
the streets
November 1938

Important dates

1933 Hitlers rise to power, names chancellor

1935 Nuremberg Laws, made marriage between
non-Jews illegal,
1937-39 Jews could not attend public schools,
theatres or vacation resorts. They were also forced
to sell their businesses.
1939 Hitlers new solution, the end of Jews in
Europe
Sept. 1939 Germany attacks Poland
1940-41 Jews put into Ghettos

 June 1941 Germany attacks Russia

1942 gas chambers and giant furnaces added into
camps
1943 Ghettos exterminated (closed)
1944 Germans panic and try to destroy evidence
Mass shootings
Gas chambers
Thrown in the furnace dead or alive

1945 Ally forces reach Auschwitz

Ghettos
Lodz ghetto most well known and first to be
established
Jews taken to ghettos to experience an honest days
work
3 families in one room
Starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion
Public executions practiced on rule-breakers,
sometimes by Jewish leaders, rather than Nazis
When the ghettos were cleared out, the Jews were
taken to camps
Fake films of the ghettos were sent to national
organizations so the world could see what the camps
were really like.

Concentration Camps
Hundreds established
6 were named as killing camps or
extermination camps
Not just Jews were kept at camps anyone
considered a threat
Wannessee conference: final decision to
eliminate the ghettos made Jan 20, 1942

Auschwitz
3 parts
1. Auschwitz I, the original (made for political
prisoners)
2. Auschwitz II Birkenau, a combination
concentration / extermination camp
3. Auschwitz IIIMonowitz, a labor camp
Auschwitz was by far the most dangerous and the
most feared camp. Once people knew they were
being sent there, they lost all hope to survive.

Life in camps

Death marches
Suffocation trains
Digging graves and then being shot into the grave
Nakedness
Bile and feces
Lice
Starvation
Disease
Separation of families

Memorable people

Adolf Hitler
leader of the Nazi troops
Married for less than 24 hours
Shot himself to avoid capture

Mussolini
Leader of Italy during
the Holocaust
Was publicly executed
57
Il Duce

Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)

American president
during the Holocaust
Polio wheelchair
Wouldnt help any
other countries until
attack on Pearl Harbor
Dec. 7, 1941

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Joseph Stalin

Russian dictator
Labor camps
Bolshevik revolution
No consideration for
human life