1. 11 million people were exterminated

2. 6 million Jews 1933-
5 million others (homosexuals, the mentally 1945
and physically handicapped, prisoners of
war, and Gypsies)

3. They were shot,
starved, gassed and
burned…

4. Defining the Holocaust
HOLOCAUST - originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire
 the annihilation of the Jews and other
groups of European people under the
Nazi regime during World War II
 GENOCIDE: the systematic
extermination of a nationality or group
“Jews
are not
welcome
here”

5. Casualties of the Holocaust:
 63% of Jewish population in Europe killed
 91% of Jewish population in Poland killed
 Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27,
1945. The Soviets found 836, 255 women’s dresses, 348, 000
men’s suits, 38, 000 pairs of men’s shoes and 14, 000 pounds of
human hair. But only… 7, 650 live prisoners

6. European Jewish Population in 1933
was 9,508,340

7. Estimated Jewish survivors of
Holocaust: 3,546,211

8. How did the Holocaust Happen?
 The Power of Words
 Anti-Semitism
 The Stages of Isolation

9. The Power of Words…
 “The great masses of the people will more easily fall
victims to a big lie than a small one”
 “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think”
 “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth”
 “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all
evil assumes the living shape of the Jew”
 What do all these quotes have in common?

10. All belong to Adolf Hitler…

11. Europe’s age-old Anti-Semitism
 the hatred of or prejudice
against Jews
 common since the Middle Ages
when the Catholic Church
taught that Jews were
responsible for killing Jesus
 Jews were expelled for a time
from France (1254), England
(1290), and Spain (1492)
 people blamed the Jews for the Black
Death
 hundreds were burned at the stake
amidst general persecution and murder
of Jews {16th century drawing }

12. Anti-Semitism
 pogroms took place in Russia
 towards the end of the 19th century,
Jewish bankers were blamed for
Henry Ford Germany’s economic woes. The Jews
were seen as evil and greedy
capitalists
 Jewish Conspiracy
 The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion
 after the defeat in WWI, German anti-
Semitism reached new heights as Jews
were blamed for the loss

13. The Stages of Isolation (The Holocaust)
The Holocaust was a progression of acts leading to the annihilation of millions:
 1: Stripping of Rights
 2: Segregation
 3: Concentration
 4: Extermination

14. 1935
Stage 1: Stripping of Rights 
Nuremberg Laws (1935)
stated that all German JEWS were :
 stripped of German citizenship
 fired from jobs & businesses
boycotted
 banned from schools & universities
 marriages between Jews and Aryans
forbidden
 forced to carry ID cards
 Passports stamped with a “J”
 forced to wear the arm band of the
Yellow “Star of David”
 Jewish synagogues destroyed
 forced to pay reparations and a
special income tax

15. Passports to be Seat Restrictions on Streetcars
carried at all times:
“J” for “Juden”
Identification and Registration

16. Identifying Jewish Businesses
Boycott
Boycotting Jewish Shops

17. Kristallnacht - 1938
• the Nazis began deporting Polish Jews living in Germany
• Herschel Grynszpan had been sent by his parents to Paris
• when his family was deported, Grynszpan, by way of
protest, attempts to assassinate a German diplomat in the
Paris embassy (the official dies two days later)
• Nazi hierarchy suggests an international Jewish conspiracy
exists
• back in Germany (and Austria)
anti-Semitic pogroms break out

18. “International Jewish
conspiracy”
• on the “Night of Broken Glass” Jewish shops and synagogues are
damaged, destroyed and looted
• 26,000 Jews are arrested, 91 die
• further economic and political persecution of Jews would follow
• it marks the ominous beginning of the Holocaust

19. Treatment of Jews during the 1930s
Public mistreatment
Burnt synagogues
Looted stores

20. Emigration
 early on the Nazi state
offered its Jews a way out:
voluntary emigration
 faced with discriminatory
laws and policies, many
Jews felt they had no choice
but to leave
 the problem was finding
nations that would take the
Jewish refugees
German Jewish Immigrants reach Montreal in
November 1938.

21.  this “First Solution” offered by the Nazis met with little success
 Canada, for instance, accepted very few Jews
 in 1939, The St. Louis, with 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away. The
ship returned to Europe where 3/4 of the refugees died in concentration
camps

22. 1939
Stage 2: Segregation 
GHETTOS
 Jews were forced to live in designated
areas called “ghettos” to isolate them
from the rest of society
 these enclosed and fortified areas
would become home to the Jews of
occupied Europe

 Nazis established 356 ghettos in
Poland, the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, and
Hungary during WWII
 ghettos were filthy, with poor
sanitation and extreme overcrowding
 Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held
500,000 people and was 3.5 square
miles in size (It was liquidated in
April 1943)

23. The Ghetto  Warsaw, the largest
ghetto, held 500,000
people and was 3.5
square miles in size
 it was liquidated in April
1943
Registration Card
Moving in…
Warsaw Ghetto

24. Life in the ghettos
Ghetto Ration Card
 disease was rampant and food was in such short
supply that many slowly starved to death
 ghettos were located both outside of and inside
the cities

25. Nazi ghettos were a preliminary step in the annihilation of the Jews,
eventually becoming transition areas and collection points for deportation
to concentration & death camps

26. Oskar Schindler
“Whoever saves one life,
saves the entire world”
• Oskar Schindler, a vain and greedy German businessman, becomes an unlikely
humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign
• having initially moved to Poland to profit from Jewish slave labour available from
the ghetto, Schindler in time feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews
• Schindler managed to save about 1,100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz
concentration camp

27. 1943
The Ghettos are emptied…

28. 1940
Stage 3: Concentration Camps 
 camps had existed in Germany since 1933, yet proliferate after 1940
 essential to Nazi’s systematic oppression and eventual murder of
its enemies
 slave labor is used: “annihilation by work”
 prisoners faced undernourishment and starvation
 prisoners transported in freight cars designed for cattle
 camps built along railroad lines for efficient transportation

29. Heinrich
Himmler
• beginning in 19 38 , J were targeted for internment solely because
ews
they were Jews
• before then, only J who fit one of the earlier categories faced
ews
internment in the camps
• the camps were run by the S. S.
• they used the camps to make money and rented out labour to
industrialists like Krupp

30. WHO ?
Jews
Political adversaries
(Communists &
Social Democrats)
The socially and
racially undesirable
(homosexuals,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Gypsies, the
handicapped)
Prisoners of war

31. Forced Labour in Quarry
Slave Labour
in Factories

32. Life in the Camps
 possessions were confiscated
 arms tattooed
 men, women and children were
separated

33.  prison uniforms
were provided
 heads were shaved

34. Guards
Camps
 random acts of
violence were common
 survival based on trade
skills / physical strength
 the food was terrible
and insufficient
Birkenau

35. Inside the concentration camps
 unsanitary, disease- ridden, and lice
infested barracks were the norm
 overcrowding was a major problem and
contributed to the spread of diseases (such
as typhus)

36.  Yellow: J {Star of David}
ews
 Red: P olitical dissidents
 Green: Common criminals
 Purple: R eligious fundamentalists
 Blue: Immigrants
 Brown: R and Sinti (Gypsies)
oma
 Black: L esbians and " anti-socials"
 Pink: Gay men
Eichmann

37. Human
Experimentation
 inhumane medical experiments
were conducted
 freezing
 starvation
 exposure to chemicals
Freezing Experiment- Dachau
Josef Mengele
“The Angel of Death”

38. 1942
Stage 4: Extermination 
 Euthanasia program: Nazi
policy to eliminate those
“unworthy of life” (mentally or
physically challenged, the ill) to
promote Aryan “racial integrity”
[perhaps 75,000 died in this way]
 Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing
units) had begun operations
aimed at killing entire Jewish
communities in occupied
Eastern Europe (1939-1941)
 special action groups that followed
the advancing army to cleanse
conquered areas

39. Einsatzgruppen
 ranks composed largely of highly educated and motivated men
 many of its leaders represented Nazi intellectual elite
 round up local J ews, leaving mass graves in their wake

41. Death Camps—Arrival
 DEATH FACTORIES:
Nazi extermination
camps fulfilled the
singular function of mass
murder

42.  Sorting and classification of new arrivals

43. Death Camps — Selection and
Processing
 in the extermination camps, large detention
centres created for the confinement, slave
labour, and mass executions of prisoners, the
“Final Solution” would take place
 Jewish children were specifically targeted (kill
the next generation)

45. Death Camps—Final Outcome
 called for the complete and mass
annihilation and extermination of
the Jews as well as other groups
 Zyklon B gas became the agent used
in the mass extermination

46. Gas Chambers & Crematoriums
 prisoners were sent to gas chambers
disguised as showers
 Zyklon B gas used to gas people in 3
– 15 minutes
 up to 8,000 people were gassed per
day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the
largest death camp with four
operating gas chambers
 Gold fillings from victim’s teeth
were melted down to make gold bars
 prisoners moved dead bodies to
massive crematoriums

47. Chamber Openings to drop in
Empty Zyklon B Canisters
Gas Canisters (Pellets)
Birkenau Crematorium

48. Nearing the End 1945
 By 1945, as Allied troops closed in, the Nazis began destroying
the crematoriums and camps
 between 1944-1945, the Nazis ordered the prisoners to
undertake long distance death marches (Todesmarsche)
 over 300,000 prisoners perished on these marches

49. 1945
• in January the Soviet army entered
Auschwitz (the largest camp) and
liberated the more than 7,000 mostly ill
and dying prisoners that remained

50. • while rumours of the camps had leaked out, few people
realized the full extent of the slaughter taking place

51. Liberation: the
Americans and
British arrive

52. Dachau
April ‘45

53. “Kanada”
•storeroom housing confiscated property of prisoners: the sheer
amount of loot stored there was associated with the riches of Canada

54. Holocaust Art

57. 1945-1949
Aftermath: Nuremberg
 Nuremberg Trials: lasting four years, war crimes
trials for Nazi officials began (24 Nazi leaders were
tried; 11 death penalties; three life sentences; four 10-
20 year sentences)
 State of Israel created in 1947 due to world sympathy
 Yom ha-Shoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day
established in 1951
 German government offers pensions
by way of compensation to Holocaust
survivors (of death camps and later the
Ghettos)
Himmler

58. Pastor Martin Niemoller spent
eight years in the camps
(Dachau and Sachsenhausen)

59. Oskar Schindler
Heroes who saved
Jewish lives...
Raoul Wallenberg
 Swedish diplomat stationed in
Hungary.
 He helped 95,000 Hungarian Jews
escape by providing them with fake
passports which claimed that the bearers
were Swedish subjects.
 He was later arrested by the USSR as a
spy and may have died in a Soviet prison
camp. It is not known for certain.
 He was made an honorary citizen of
Canada, the US and Israel.

60. STUDENT NOTES
Points to better understand the Holocaust:
• anti-Semitism had long been present in Europe and Hitler made use of these feelings
• the first stage of the Holocaust involved Stripping away the Rights of Germany’s Jews
• the Nuremberg Laws forced Jews to carry IDs and wear arm bands with the “Star of
David”, forbade intermarriage, and boycotted Jewish businesses
• Kristallnacht in 1938 (when a Jew killed a German diplomat) marked a change in attitude
toward the Jews (synagogues were burned and Jews arrested): the Holocaust had truly
begun
• the second stage of the Holocaust involved segregating the Jews from the rest of the
population and placing them in overcrowded ghettos (the most famous being Warsaw)
• the third stage of the Holocaust placed the Jews into camps where they would be worked
and starved to death (slave labour to support the German military machine)
• Oskar Schindler for a time exploited this source of labour
• Jews would be joined here by homosexuals, Communists, the disabled, Gypsies & others
• the fourth stage of the Holocaust was one of extermination (in areas of recent conquest
by the Einsatzgruppen killing units or in the death camps- like Auschwitz)
MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND:
Nuremberg Laws / Kristallnacht / ghettos / camps
Auschwitz / Oskar Schindler / Einsatzgruppen

61. Swastika: A Symbol of Good or Evil?
• the swastika is an ancient Indian symbol (Sanskrit)
that is over 3,000 years old meaning well being, life
and good luck, prosperity
• the swastika is sacred religious symbol for Hindus,
Jains and Buddhists
•Common symbol in ancient civilizations
(Mesopotamia, India, China, Central and South
America (Maya)
•In 1920, Adolf Hitler decided that the Nazi Party
needed its own insignia and flag and chose the
swastika to represent the mission of the struggle
for the victory of the Aryan man
•Because of the Nazis flag, the swastika soon
became a symbol of hate, anti-Semitism,
violence, death, and murder.

62. The Financial Link
• in Europe, the Medieval Christian Church forbade usury (lending money for
profit) by Christians
• Jews were, however, free to loan money to Gentiles (Christians) but NOT to fellow
Jews (the Old Testament did not permit such charging of interest to Jews)
• the result was Jews came to dominate the money lending business
• in Europe’s cities they were forced to live in ghettos (Social Exclusion)
• in time Christians (during Italy’s Renaissance) would legitimize the lending of
money through the creation of banks, thus making it respectable