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The Holocaust Overview
The Holocaust Overview
Mark Blanchfield
Larry Nueberger
4 April 2011
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The Holocaust was brought about by Nazi Germany during World War II. It
entailed the horrific slaughtering of six million Jewish people. The Nazi party enacted
laws that made it a crime to be a Jew and eventually the punishment was death in which
all Jews had to be killed. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews and confined them to ghettos
awaiting execution. While waiting they were subject to inhumane living conditions. The
Nazi persecution was brought about by the SS (Protection Squad), the SA (Storm
Troopers) and the SD (Death's Head Units). In 1941 mass murders of Jews started and
the Nazis started deporting Jews to labor camps or death camps. The persecution started
in 1933 and the mass murdering ended with the liberation in 1945.
The Nazis had a slow start to power according to Yad Vashem’s web site. Adolf
was small at that time and did not carry much political
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power rose to power with elections brought about by an
http://bit.ly/fTsIiT
January 1933 after the Nazis gained control of the parliament and was given an order by
the president to create a government (“Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution”).
to strip the Jews of their rights. After only five weeks of Hitler’s coming to power,
attacks had already begun toward the Jews and anyone who was thought to oppose the
Reich. Within seven weeks following Hitler’s appointment to power, the Dachau
concentration camp was established. Germany quickly became a police state and the Nazi
party started using anti-Semitic propaganda to demonize the Jews. They portrayed the
Jews as the sons of the Devil and as liars (Yad Vashem, “Rise of the Nazis and Beginning
of Persecution”, “Antisemitism”). While Hitler was Chancellor his power was limited by
the laws of the state (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), “Germany:
president died in mid-1934 and Hitler took over the position, which led to extreme anti-
were two different laws. The first law was the Reich
under the age of forty-five as domestic servants among other things (Gavin, “The
Nuremberg Laws”).
Moreover, the implementation of these laws brought Jewish segregation and was
just the beginning of more laws to strip rights from Jews. After the Nuremburg Laws
were implemented, much debate was brought about among Nazi leaders on how to
determine who is a Jew. This led to the creation of a chart for the leaders to determine
who is a Jew, half Jew or an Aryan. After these laws were in effect, the Jews thought the
worst was over which was true for several more years (Gavin, “The Nuremberg Laws”).
Kristallnacht
Later came Kristallnacht referred to as “the night of broken glass”, and as stated
by Gavin, was brought about by a Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan who was
living in Paris at the time. The Germans by order of the SS deported many thousands of
Jews to Poland and the Grynspan family was among them. When the Jews arrived at the
border the Polish would not let them enter the country (“The Night of Broken Glass”).
Herschel was told of this and became enraged over what happened to his family.
In addition, he was looking at being removed from France because his request for
permanent residency was denied. In his fury he went to the German embassy and killed
one of the officials. Hitler’s propaganda minister used the killing to bring about a plan for
a “popular uprising” against the Jews, in which there would be no visible ties with
Hitler’s administration. However, his plan failed and the uprising was carried out by the
On the night of November 9, 1938, all throughout Germany and Austria, these
men broke out the windows of Jewish businesses and homes. They also burned
laws to strip Jews of every right. Some of the laws invalidated all Jewish passports and
required all Jews to add a name that would identify them as Jews. Nazi leaders pushed for
the “Aryanization” of all businesses forcing all Jewish business owners to sell to non-
Jewish Germans.
Nazi storm troopers conducted deportations of all Polish Jews back to their homeland.
Poland was unprepared for the large number of refugees and forced the deported Jews to
stay in abandon buildings in the border town of Zbaszyn (Yad Vashem, “1938”,
“Zbaszyn”).
The Rounding up of Jews. Following this the Germans invaded Poland in 1939
and quickly conquered it. There were close to two million Jews living in Poland at that
time. Many had emigrated from Germany and they fell into the hands of the Nazis once
again. At this time the Nazis no longer tried to appease the rest of the world with their
actions. The SS squad joined other military units and wreaked havoc on the Jews and the
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Poles. The Jews were required to wear “the badge of shame” which was the Star of David
Attacks on Jews”).
By the fall of 1939 the Nazis had conquered most of Europe and established
ghettos in Eastern Europe. There were close to one-thousand built, encompassing small
sections of a city. Many were surrounded by brick walls. They imprisoned most of the
European Jews in these ghettos while they were awaiting deportation to extermination or
labor camps (Yad Vashem, “Expansion of German Conquest and Policy towards Jews”).
The living conditions of these ghettos were inhumane. There was widespread
“Warsaw”).
Many Jews did not stay in the ghettos for long; they were deported to ether death
concentration camps and over a thousand other camps which were designed to force slave
labor on its occupants (Vogelsang and Larsen, “The Concentration Camps, 1933-45”).
The living conditions at these camps were brutal. The men were crammed into
bunks. In addition, the individuals worked on average twelve hours a day and were
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the conditions, these camps claimed the lives of somewhere between 795,889 and
the Jewish Question” (the Nazis plan to kill all the Jews), the Nazis invaded the Soviet
Union in June of 1941. The first mass killings of Jews and communists were carried out
A mass grave
of extermination (Yad Vashem, “The Beginning
http://bit.ly/hfkhkc
of The Final Solution”).
They continued these killings until late 1941 when the Germans realized they
were not winning the war with the Soviets. As a result, the killings stopped so the Jews
could work making roads, military equipment and other things to help the war continue.
Early in the following year, the killings resumed (Yad Vashem, The Beginning of The
Final Solution”).
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The Wannsee Conference. After a short time, the Wannsee conference was held
ways to kill people. The leaders concurred the most effective way to fast and impersonal
Following the conference they built death camps to carry out the gassing. Now
that the Nazis had the answer to their problem, they quickly started to transport all Jews
to these death camps for mass extermination (Vogelsang and Larsen, “Extermination
Camps”).
Many execution methods were tried until 1942 when they held the Wannsee
Conference. The first were mass shootings in which the Nazis had the Jews dig massive
holes. The executioners made the victims line up at the edge of the pit and they were
murdered by a firing squad. After everyone dropped it to the pit, the slaughterers had the
next group line up for assignation and this continued for some time (Yad Vashem, “The
The mass shootings of woman and children had a major psychological impact on
the Nazis, so they looked for a new way to kill. The second method was the use of box
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trucks. The trucks were sealed and fitted with a pipe that directed all of the trucks exhaust
into the back were the victims were crowded. This was effective in not having the victims
being watched while being killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Gassing
Operations”).
The gassing trucks proved to be too slow for large scale extermination and a more
efficient way was developed. The Germans started to use chambers were they would
pump in ether carbon monoxide or Zyklon-B gas into a large room filled with many men,
woman and children. This proved to be the most effective way of mass execution (United
Death camps. These were built and used to the fullest extent after the “Final
Solution” was decided upon. There were six death camps including Chelmno, Treblinka,
“Extermination Camps”).
all. Prisoners arrived in cattle cars to the camp. There was a selection process were the SS
would take a small number of people and send them to forced labor and the rest were
quickly moved into the gas chambers. The Nazis made the gas chambers to resemble
showers to trick the victims into entering. After the victims were gassed they were
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Auschwitz II in its most efficient time was killing around 6,000 people a day. It
One of the crematoriums at Auschwitz
claimed the lives of around 1,085,000 people from http://bit.ly/e4Bkbd
dismantled the gas chambers (USHMM, “Auschwitz”). The total number of people killed
between all six of the death camps was over 3,000,000 (Vogelsang and Larsen,
“Extermination Camps”).
When the Holocaust was coming to an end because the Nazis were losing the war,
the SS started to force the prisoners on “Death Marches” from the camps in Poland
toward the interior portion of Germany. Thousands of men died on these marches
200,000 to 250,000 prisoners died on these marches (Yad Vashem, “The Final Stages of
When the forces entered the camps they found massive amounts of dead bodies and
human remains. In addition, they found starving and diseased prisoners (USHMM,
After liberation. The Jews returning to Germany were not welcomed back home
after the liberation. They were met with hostility and anti-Semitic gangs quickly formed.
These gangs murdered close to 1,500 Jews within the first month (Yad Vashem, “The
Some Jews headed toward Poland after encountering such hostility in an effort to
live peacefully. “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee” provided support
for the displaced Jews by providing food, medical care and other necessities (Yad
Other Jews left toward Palestine. Around 70,000 arrived in Palestine, but over
50,000 were arrested and were again put into camps due to a British mandate limiting
immigrants. The Joint Distribution Committee helped the Jews with their connection to
Palestine (Yad Vashem, “The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath”).
“On November 27, 1947, the United Nations resolved to terminate the British
The Israel flag The State of Israel was formed in May 1948 and
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their home (USHMM, “The Aftermath of the Holocaust”). The Jews who once had to
wear the Star of David for shame now display it on their flag with pride.
Works Cited
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Gavin, Philip. The History Place. N.p., 4 July 1996. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
The Holocaust History Project. “ The Wannsee Conference”. N.p., 1998. Web. 24 Feb.
2011.
Jones, Adam. “Case Study: The Jewish Holocaust, 1933-45.” Gendercide Watch . N.p.,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
---. “Auschwitz.”
---. “Ghettos.”
Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B. Larsen. The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Yad Vashem- The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. International
---. “1938.”
---. “Antisemitism.”
---. “Warsaw.”