Research paper Holocaust overview

Kelle Todd

Eng. comp 102-106 Mr. Neuberger 2012-04-02

Nazi Rise to Power Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria in 1889. When World War One broke out Hitler joined the German army and received the duty as a messenger. According to Stephen Tonge at History Home, Hitler was considered a brave soldier; he gained promotion to corporal and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, ironically on the recommendation of a Jewish officer. Hitler was strongly influenced by the fascist ruler of Italy know as Mussolini. He adopted the rallies, flags and the right arm salute from Mussolini .Hitler promised to make Germany a great place again by demolishing the Treaty of Versailles and to destroy Communism, socialism, and democracy. He also saw Germans as the master race and in result promised to eliminate all Jewish men, woman, and children. The depression of 1929 created poverty and unemployment, which made people angry with the Weimar
Salute to Evil 1938

government. People lost confidence in the democratic system and turned towards

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the extremist political parties such as the Communists and Nazis during the depression. Also according to Tonge, in 1928, the Nazis had only 12 seats in the Reichstag; by July 1932, they had 230 seats and were the largest party. After acquiring German citizenship through the state of Brunswick, he ran in the presidential elections of 1932, losing to the popular war hero Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler was a great speaker, with the power to make people support him. Tonge also stated In January 1933, Hitler became chancellor, and immediately set about making himself absolute ruler of Germany using Article 48 and was successful. Nazis views on Jews

2 "None but members of the nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."(Hitler) Hitler put the burden of Germanys hardships on the Jewish community and used his public speaking ability to persuade others. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler had his ideal version of a master race called Aryan tall, blue eyes and blonde hair. Having this pure race was Hitlers way of taking over the world and the Jewish population. According to Hitlers views of the jaws article The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered "inferior." Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations, operations making it impossible for the victims to have
The Jews VS the Nazis http: //bit.ly/HMpypU

children. Hitler and other Nazi leaders viewed the Jews not as a religious group, but as a

poisonous "race," which "lived off the other races and weakened them. The article also stated They measured skull size and nose length, and recorded the color of their pupils' hair and eyes to determine whether students belonged to the true "Aryan race." Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) students were often humiliated in the process. A Jewish individual was forced to wear a yellow Star of David so it was known they were not a part of the master race. Nuremberg Laws According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nuremberg Laws was established at the annual party rally in Nuremberg in1935, which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood."

3 According to the Nuremberg Laws, being Jewish was not defined as a religious practice. The museum also stated an individual was even considered Jewish if they had Jewish grandparents; even if there parent had converted to Christianity. Like everyone in Germany, Jews were required to carry identity cards, but the government added special identifying marks to theirs: a red "J" stamped on them and new middle names for all those Jews who did not possess recognizably "Jewish"
The Nuremberg Laws

first names -- "Israel" for males, "Sara" for females. Such cards allowed the police to identify Jews easily.

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The Nazis even broke down who was a Jew by developing charts breaking down connections of generations and association. The laws excluded Jews the right to vote or hold a place on political office.

Propaganda In Nazi Germany, Dr. Joseph Goebbels was in charge of propaganda. Goebbels official title was Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment. According to History learning, Dr. Gobbles had two tasks to ensure nobody in Germany could read or see anything that was hostile or damaging to the Nazi Party and to ensure that the views of the Nazis were put across in the most persuasive manner possible; to insure this he collaborated with SS and Gestapo and Albert Speer. Dr. Gobbles founded the Reich Chamber of Commerce in 1933. The organization produced literature, art, music, radio, film, newspapers and anything else that persuade the community. You only

Nazi Propaganda http://bit.ly/HMpypU

4 seen and heard what the Nazis wanted you to. "The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it." Goebbels Kristallnacht Kristallnacht or known as English translation the Night of Broken Glass happened November 9th1938. According to PBS, The Night of Broken Glass was due to one 17-year-old boy Hershel Grynszpan, who spoke up in his view for all Jewish individuals by assassinating Ernst vom Rath on November 9 1938, the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. Grynszpan stated, "Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased like an animal." Punishing Grynszpan was not enough Jewish men, women, and children were going to pay for his major mistake in the Nazis eyes. In result that night gangs of Nazis had destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses, set fire to more than 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews and deported some 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. Goebbels a Nazi party leader announced the next day "We shed not a tear for them
Burned-out synagogue http://bit.ly/tgcN93

Ghettos Ghetto is the term to describe where the Jews were ordered to live as their community. The ghettos where not known as suburb well-kept area. The first documented ghetto was documented in Venice in 1916. In Germany, the Nazi had established over 1,000 ghettos, October 1935 the first ghetto reached Piotrkw Trybunalski. The Germans ordered Jews residing in ghettos to wear identifying badges

5 or armbands and required many Jews to perform forced labor for the German Reich. Jewish individuals retaliated by smuggling in food, medicine, and tried to retain information form the other side of the walls of the ghettos. One of the well-known ghettos is the Warsaw Ghetto witch contained 400,000 civilians and opened in 1939. There living quarters where closed off by a concert wall, aligned with barbed wire. Life in the ghetto started tough and quickly got worse. The article entitled The Ghettos stated, at first, some semblance of normal life presided: cafes were still
Starving family

open, newspapers published, school lessons took place

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and people strived to continual a normal existence as best as they could. On average, an individual consumed around 200 calories a day. Finding a human lying dead on the street from starvation was common. In addition, stated By April 1941, the mortality rate in the ghetto was a staggering six thousand people per month. Funeral carts would come and collect the bodies every morning, between 4-5am; mostly the corpses were dumped naked on the streets - the families were forced to strip their relatives in order to sell the clothes.

Extermination methods The Nazis used five main extermination methods to try to eliminate the Jewish population, the firing squad, Corbin monoacid, hell vans, Zyklon B, Massive Gas Chambers and Crematoria. The German soldiers would line up a group of Jewish men, woman and children and shot them so they would fall and dispose in a mass grave. According to the memoirs of Rudolf Hss, Commandant of Auschwitz,

Hell van http://to.pbs.org/f5koEQ

6 Adolf Eichmann suggested using "showers of carbon monoxide while bathing, as was done with mental patients in some places in the Reich." Instead of leading to water, the showerheads were connected to canisters of carbon monoxide. Another solution was known as the term hell vans. The Nazis would load dozens of individuals in the back of a van that had the exhaust fumes routed into the back by the time they drove out to the woods the Jews were deceased. The Nazis sometimes burned them or tossed them into a mass grave. The fourth method was the use of Zyklon B, when being exposed to heated air it becomes a lethal gas, their most effected gas. There last efforts where massive Gas Chambers and Crematoria. Also stated in the article The killing Evolution stated, by the early spring of 1943, four huge crematoria became operational at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). They housed eight gas chambers and forty-six ovens that could dispose of some 4,400 corpses per day. Trains would arrive at the camp and those most fit approximately 10-30 percent of the arrivalswould be selected for a work detail. The remaining prisoners were sent to the gas chambers. The Nazis would cremate selected individuals and would have the Jewish workers handle putting the bodies in the crematory. In the end, the Nazis tried covering up Auschwitz by blowing the Gas Chambers and Crematoria is up but was unable to cover the stench.

The death camps

According to think quest Death camps or known as concentration camp refer to a camp in which people are detained or con Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and T.II. The first built camp in 1933 was Dachau, in Germany. Not designed as a killing camp but as an experimental camp many were left disabled or dead though. Auschwitz

Auschwitz there Front gate http://bit.ly/HWXOTT

7 was three camps combined making it the largest concentration camp that was located in Poland. In Auschwitz there were forced to work day to day, some were used and experimental sacrifices. Once you were old, unable to work you, were no good to them, you were killed. An estimated one million people were killed while at Auschwitz. Majorly of the concentration camps where designed to treat one as a slave, experiment, or murdered only the strong willed and motivate. In 1945, the war ended. By then all the concentration camps were closed.

Liberation Liberation was the end of the harsh reality of the suffering the Nazi party put the Jewish community through, concentration camps. In July 1944, the advancement of the Soviet Union through the Germans off the power trip they believed they were entitled to. The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest extermination and concentration camp, in January 1945. There were on average only a several thousand survivors. The soviets made the survivors march westwards known today as the death march. According to Holocaust history, while raiding the camp the soviet discovered hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair. The Germans surrendered and within
Surviving children of the Auschwitz

the next couple of months over camps such as Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck were liberated. On April 11,

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8 1945, The U.S even took part and liberated Buchenwald that consisted of 20,000 prisoners, as well as Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbrg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics.

9 Works Cited "Adolf Hitler: His Views on Jews." The Propagander! Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http://propagander2.tripod.com/index-12.html>. "Concentration Camps." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0210520/concentration_camps.htm>. "Holocaust History." Ghettos. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. "Holocaust History." Liberation of Auschwitz. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. "The Killing Evolution." PBS. PBS. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. "Kristallnacht." PBS. PBS. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. "THE NUREMBERG RACE LAWS." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. "Propaganda in Nazi Germany." History Learning Site. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. Tonge, Stephen. "European History." Hitler: The Rise to Power. Web. 19 Apr. 2012.