Holocaust

The Holocaust(Jews) The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of about six million Jews by the Nazis. Holocaust is a word that means “sacrifice by fire”. The Nazis came to power around January 1933 and believed that Germans were racially superior to Jews. History • The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers. • The term Holocaust refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. • In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered. • The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people. • Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as concentration camps, there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner of war camps, and transit camps. History • From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners and people the Nazis labeled as "asocial." • After Kristallnacht in 1938, the persecution of Jews became more organized. This led to the increase in the number of Jews sent to concentration camps. • Life inside Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and given tiny amounts to eat. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk. Torture inside the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent. History • At many of the Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will. • While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination camps were built for the purpose of killing large groups of people quickly and efficiently. • Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. About 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz. Effect of the Holocaust •About 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of them were Jews. •The Nazis killed about two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe. •About 1.1 million children were murdered. •After the beginning of World War II, Nazis began ordering all Jews to live within certain, very specific, areas of big cities, called ghettos. •Jews were forced out of their homes and moved into smaller apartments, often shared with other families. Circumstances that led to Holocaust •On April 1, 1933, the Nazis announced a boycott of all Jewish run businesses. •September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg laws excluded Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages and sex between Jews and Germans. •Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired them from civil service jobs, made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from working on anyone other than Jewish patients. •During the night of November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht took place. This night of violence included the burning of synagogues, breaking the windows of Jewish owned businesses, robbing of these stores, and many Jews were attacked. Also, about 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. •After World War II started in 1939, the Nazis began ordering Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing so that Jews could be easily recognized and targeted.