The persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust

• Anti-semitism

  Hostile actions and prejudice towards Jewish people
• Pogrom

  Organised violence against the Jewish communities
• Stereotype


  A widely held belief that is very simplified and often completely wrong
• Reasons for historical persecution of Jews

  1. Christianity was the dominant religion in europe
  2. Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus
  3. Many money lenders were Jewish so people in debt often disliked them
• Aryan Race - Persecution under Nazis (1933-1938)


  The belief that white europeans or ‘aryans’ were superior to other ethnic groups
• Boycott: Persecution under Nazis (1933-1938)

  People avoiding certain businesses to make a point. In 1933 the Nazis encouraged Germans to boycott Jewish businesses
• Nuremberg laws: Persecution under Nazis (1933-1938)

  A series of laws passed in 1935 by the nazis, said that Jews were not German citizens and banned Jews from having a relationship with ‘Aryans’
• Reasons the Nazis dislike Jews: Persecution under Nazis (1933-1938)

  1. Blamed them for the loss of WW1
  2. Blamed them for causing economic problems in Germans
  3. Stereotype them as being anti German
• Kristallnacht - 7th nov 1938: violence against Jews and ghettos (1938-1942)

  Means the ’night of broken glass’

  nazi thugs destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses, burned 250 synagogues and arrested 30,000
• Ghetto: violence against Jews and ghettos (1938-1942)

  A walled off part if a city where Jews were forced to live often in terrible living conditions with lots of diseases and starvation
• Warsaw ghetto: violence against Jews and ghettos (1938-1942)

  Ghetto in Warsaw, poland with over 40,000 occupants

  in 1943 there was an armed uprising led by a Jewish resistance group in response to people being moved to extermination camps
• WW2-1939: violence against Jews and ghettos (1938-1942)


  When the war started millions more Jew came under the control of Nazis in Poland and Russia
• Einsatzgruppen: violence against Jews and ghettos (1938-1942)


  Killing squads whose job it was to murder jews (operated in Soviet Union)
• Final solution: The final solution

  The name given to the Nazis idea of dealing with the ‘Jewish problem’ - 6,000,000 Jews would be murdered
• Wannsee conference: The final solution

  Meeting held in 1942 where leading Nazis decided to exterminate the Jews under their control
• Extermination camps: The final solution

  1. camps designed with the specific purpose of killing often using zyklon B gas
  2. the largest of these camps was auschwitz-birkenau
• Intentionalist

  A historian who believes events like the Holocaust were carefully planned
• Functionalist

  A historian who believes that events like the Holocaust happen as situations present themselves