The Holocaust

A Luis Rodriguez Presentation Mrs. Eden Period 6

Germany's Nazi Tyranny, Adolf Hitler

Before the time of the Nazi Party there was The German Workers' Party which in 1919 Adolf Hitler joined and quickly rose to power using emotional and captivating speeches. He was very for national pride, militarism, and commitment to the Volk and a racially pure Germany. He also encouraged antisemitic feelings. He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers' Party or how known in common knowledge the Nazi Party. By the end of 1920, it had about 3,000 members. He then become the official leader or Fhrer.

-Racial Ideology, Nuremberg Laws 1938

A Conference of Ministers united on August 20, 1935, to discuss the economic effects of the Nazi Party's actions against Jews. The first law, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews (the name was now officially used in place of non-Aryans ) and Germans and also the employment of German females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, The Reich Citizenship Law, stripped Jews of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between Reich citizens and nationals. The laws denied Jews citizen rights.

-Warsaw Ghetto 1938

The City of Warsaw, which is the capital of Poland, is on both sides of the Vistula River. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Warsaw suffered heavy air attacks and artillery bombardment. German troops entered Warsaw on September 29, shortly after its surrender. On October 12, 1940, the Germans created a Ghetto for Jews in Warsaw. The living conditions were poor in the ghetto and the Jews received few rations. When Soviet troops resumed their offensive on January 17, 1945, they liberated a devastated Warsaw. According to Polish data, only about 174,000 people were left in the city, less than six per cent of the prewar population. Approximately 11,500 of the survivors were Jews.

-Kristallnacht 1938

The Germans were looking for a way to get rid of their Jews. Send them anywhere, but just get them out. Many Jews of Polish origin had come to Germany because conditions were so much better there than in Poland. The Germans saw this as a group to be easily gotten rid of. They were rounded up and, on one cold, rainy night in the fall, they were herded and beaten across the border. 12,000-17,000 Polish Jews, who were not considered Poles any more, found themselves in a small border town in Poland that had a population of 6,000 Poles. They hadnt eaten for days. Germany did not produce plate glass at the time, and it took Belgiums total plate glass production about 6 months to replace all the windows that were broken. To top everything off, the Jews were charged 1 billion Deutsch Marks to pay for the damages. Every town, every place had its little "shteibel." Germany was filled with beautiful, old synagogues that had been there for centuries. And overnight it all went up in flames. The Jews finally got the message: It was time to leave.

-Concentration Camps

In Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, concentration camps were an integral feature of the regime. In January 1933 Hitler established concentration camps as Chancellor of Germany. As the Nazi Party pushed forward all over Europe between 1938 and 1939, the numbers of those labeled as political opponents and social deviants increased, requiring the establishment of new concentration camps. Meaning more minority groups were being placed into these camps. In some famous camps such as Auschwitz ablebodied people were forced to work with poor living conditions and little food. Children were experimented on and people were mass-murdered through incinerators, gas chambers ect.. This camps were truly the epitome of the evils of the Nazi regime.

Rescue

The first major camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on July 23, 1944. Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on January 27, 1945. Buchenwald by the Americans on April 11; Bergen-Belsen by the British on April 15; Dachau by the Americans on April 29; The camps continued to being liberated. In most of the camps discovered by the Soviets, almost all the prisoners had already been removed, leaving only a few thousand alive7,000 inmates were found in Auschwitz, including 180 children who had been experimented on by doctors. Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at Bergen-Belsen by the British 11th Armoured Division,[239] 13,000 corpses lay unburied, and another 10,000 died from typhus or malnutrition over the following weeks. The British forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves.

Timeline of major events of the Holocaust

The Diary of Anne Frank

This was a Jewish girl born in 1929 to Otto and Edith Frank. In 1933 they move the the Netherlands in fear of war. On May 10 1940 the Nazis invade Netherlands and they are in danger again. Anne's sister Margot gets called to a labor camp so the family goes into hiding. They hide in a secret annex with four other Jews. On the 4th of August in 1944 everyone in the Annex is arrested and all but Otto die in the camps. Otto returns to Amsterdam and finds that everyone died in the war but finds Anne's diary and would eventually publish it.

Joseph Sher

Joseph Sher was born on Krzepice,Poland. They tried to escape to Russia but by that time to many immigrants were already trying or had already gotten over there and the Russians were now keeping close eyes on there borders. Shortly after his family went to the ghetto Hitler wanted to build a highway and needed workers, men between the ages of 20 and 30. Each family had to have one man from every house go to help build it. His older brother had a wife and his other brother was not yet 20 but was very strong and wanted to go work for him, but he didn't. He survived because of some German Jews that he had known from the big ghetto. one was a physician and they were able to sneak him out, he returned to the ghetto. Shortly after his grandma was shot and killed. And after that they were moving people out of the ghettos for good, his brother was able to save ten people by bringing them to a factory to work, but he still lost his mother, and sister as soon as they moved out of the ghetto. He really didn't know where he was going or what to expect so he went.

Your Personal View of the Holocaust

I think that the Holocaust was an event that shows what evil can be accomplished when people are in a desperate situation. Germany had just finished being blamed for World War 1 when they were thrown in an economic depression and needed a solution. That was when Hitler seemed to be like the knight in shining armor and promised to return Germany to its former glory. I think we have to look back at events like these and try to learn from humanities mistakes and not repeat them.

Work Cited
http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Franks-History/ http://www.aish.com/ho/o/48956531.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitle

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=

http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/warsaw%20ghetto.

The End