Holocaust

• Why is it important that the Holocaust story must be told;

  • there are many Holocaust deniers (people who refuse to believe the Holocaust happened). from Tommy’s story is evident that it happened.
  • His story reminds us of how dangerous politicians and groups spread hateful ideas, it is important for us to know about this so that we can stand up to them or prevent something like this from reoccurring.
• The Holocaust refers to the mass murder of Jewish people by the German Nazi regime during the period of 1941 to 1945.Most Significant atrocities in our past.
• • The Nazis persecuted black people ; they were persecuted because Nazis believe that they were threat to the pure German race. Mixed race children were sterilised in the Rhineland to prevent ‘race polluting’ as Hitler called it.
  • The Nazis also persecuted disabled people. The Nazis believe that the Germans were ’aryans’ : The perfect race. They believe that disabled people damaged the purity of German people. In propaganda they depicted them as people who drained the Reich’s resources.
• pogram- an organised attacked or riot against a religious group
• Shaoh- Hebrew word for the holocaust meaning catastrophe
• Kristallnacht – Night of broken glass. This was when the Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops on November 9th 1938. It was a warning to all Jews that their lives would become more difficult if they did not leave Germany.
• Nuremberg laws were passed to strip Jews of their rights.
• Ghetto - a part of a city where a minority group lived due to legal,social or economic pressure.
• The Nazis formulated their official plan to

  exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. This was the Final Solution. This happened at the Wannsee comference.
• Einsatzgruppen - special mobile killing squads that executed 'anti-German elements'
• Effects of the Holocaust

  • The mass murder of six million Jews
  • The mass murder of Slavic people, Roma, LGBT people, communists, prisoners of war and others
  • Jewish emigration, especially to the US, Canada, France and South Africa
• Concentration camps

  • families were separated
  • Healthy people = worked
  • unhealthy people were separated from the rest and killed
  • their heads were shaved off.
  • their belongings were taken.
  • used for medical experiments ; especially twins (without their consent)
• The liberation of concentration camps happened when soviet soldiers encountered concentration camps. They found Majdanek intact with crematoriums,mass graves and piles of corpses. On Jan 27 1945 they entered Aushwitz where there was thousands of sick prisoners. Only half made it alive. British,French,Canadian and American troops liberated concentration camps. America liberated Buchenwald and Dachau and Britain liberated Bergen Belsen. May 1945 = all camps were liberated
• Kristallnacht marked a turning point as previously the Nazi Party had passed anti-Semitic laws restricting the rights of Jewish people, but this was the first time that it committed, planned and organised violent attacks against the Jewish community. This violence would only get more severe in the following years.
• c) Source 1: Personal accounts, e.g., Anne Frank’s Diary

  Evidence: Provide an account of the efforts of Jewish people to avoid capture.

  Source 2: Historic sites, Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

  Evidence: Show where the Holocaust was committed and how it was carried out.

  Source 3: Non-German newspapers from the liberators - of camps

  Evidence: Provide accounts of the laws and actions of the Nazi Party against the Jewish people And the state in which they were left.
• Consequences:

  1. The death of six million Jewish people, which almost completely destroyed the Jewish communities in several countries.
  2. The creation of Israel, a new state for the Jewish people in British-controlled Palestine.
• The Nuremberg Laws banned marriages between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. Jewish people were no longer Reich citizens, so they were not protected by the law and could not vote. Discrimination against Jewish people got worse as a result.