The Holocaust

Morgan Campbell, Gabrielle Niebruegge, Hannah Sauerhage

 Essential Question:
How did Jewish people go back into
society after the Holocaust?
Supporting Questions:
1.) How is the Holocaust still effecting
people today?
2.) What was life like for Jewish people
before the Holocaust?
3.) What was life like for Jewish people
during the Holocaust?
Circle of Viewpoints
Claims with Evidence:
1. Jewish survivors were still in danger for years after the Holocaust, not having a safe place to go.
Antisemetic riots were happening in Poland with 41 killed and 50 injured as old Jewish myths
came about again.
2. Other religions, such as Christianity, created antisemitism during their early years. Early
Christians accused Jewish people of kidnapping and murdering their children for their blood.
3. Oppressors wanted Jewish people to be seen as lesser than humans that only care about their
own economic gain. Hitler used them as a scapegoat for all of the issues that Germany was
facing at the time. This happened by building on negative myths about the Jewish people with
physical, verbal, and institutional abuse.
4. There are some people that believe that the Holocaust did not happen, but we did not go in
depth in this research because we wanted our focus to remain on what really matters: the
persecution of the Jewish people.
Before the Holocaust:
Hostility against Jews may date back nearly as far as Jewish history. With the rise of
Christianity, anti-Semitism spread throughout much of Europe. Early Christians
vilified Judaism in a bid to gain more converts.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to power in Germany in the 1930s on a platform of
German nationalism, racial purity and global expansion.
A state-sponsored campaign of street violence known as Kristallnacht (the “night of
broken glass”), which took place between November 9-10, 1938. The morning after
Kristallnacht, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
During the Holocaust
Many had arrived sick and scared, following harrowing train transports to
the concentration camps. Once they arrived at the camps, they went
through a selection process. Life in the camps was different for many.
Those who could steal food from their job never felt the hunger, however,
Most were starving, dehydrated, and overworked. Depending on which
camp they were in impacted their lives.
“Although they could take away what we had physically they couldn’t
remove my integrity” -Lydia (Holocaust Survivor)
The End of the Holocaust
Around one million Jews died in Auschwitz. The height of the Holocaust in
Auschwitz came in spring and summer 1944, when hundreds of thousands of Jews
(mostly from Hungary) were murdered in just a few months.

Russian Soldiers liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. During this time of
liberation, many prisoners were being killed and concentration camps were
evacuated with the idea that no prisoner or German soldier end up in Allied hands.
After the Holocaust
For the survivors, returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust was
impossible. Jewish communities no longer existed in much of Europe.

After the war, anti-Jewish riots broke out, for example in Polish cities like Kielca.
These riots made returning home dangerous.

Many survivors ended up in displaced persons' (DP) camps set up in western

Europe under Allied military occupation at the sites of former concentration camps .
There they waited to be admitted to places like the United States, South Africa, or
Palestine.
Interview
Do you face anti-semitism today? How or in what ways? At SIUe?

a. “Yes, constantly. There are multiple ways that anti-semitism is here today. They are mostly from ignorance because
my name is very Jewish. Usually, they are off hand comments like penny-pincher or Jews control the weather, the
film industries, the government, etc. At my private Jewish middle school and elementary school, I received bomb
threats constantly. Our shuls are vandalized. I have had slurs voiced at me, pennies thrown at me, and people
getting in my face telling me that I am the downfall of America and I can go back to my Jewish ancestors in
Germany.”
b. “Statistically, Jews are the most hated religious group in the United States based on the FBI’s official reports.
However it is the least recognized hate crime because people are reluctant to admit that it is still happening.
c. “My college prep high school, I did not have my holidays off, and my teacher told me that my holidays were not as
important as his homework. My school also put on a Holocaust play with slurs, Hitler puppets, and anti-semetic
symbols all over the school. I complained, but nothing was done about it. Then, the seniors got away with doing a
Nazi salute in public at the high school.”
d. “At SIUE, I have had a better experience than my previous schooling, but my professors did have a secondary bias.
It is like we are the afterthought. My freshman year, I had exams scheduled on my holidays, and I should not have
to ask about getting them moved. We should all be considered when making decisions. Another issue that I had is
observant Jews cannot type, write, cut, Friday night through Saturday night, which takes out a lot of time to do
weekend homework; therefore making it difficult to get homework assignments done on time. Also, not being able
to miss a certain amount of days of class. However, I have to miss a lot of class time for my Jewish holidays, and I
cannot do so in a way that keeps me on track for the class.”
e. “When I grew up, I was in a very sheltered environment with only Jewish people around me. Therefore, when I
went to a non-Jewish high school, I had to change how I did things and represented myself because I learned
quickly that I would be hated on for being a Jew. So, when I came to SIUE, I made sure to not show my religion
because I was afraid of getting hated on again.”
2. Is the Holocaust talked about in your family, school, and place of worship?
a. “In my place of worship, yes, we have Holocaust surviors in my shul. I went to Jewish private school in
my youth, and it was talked about commonly in everyday life. We also went to rual schools and spoke
about the Holocaust.”
b. “When it is spoken about in our families, we have to laugh about it, or we will cry about it. A lot of our
grandparents were told to hide their Jewish identity for fear that it will happen again. A lot of Holocaust
survivors lost their identities completely, and it has created a divide in the Jewish community. The
divide is not about being Jewish, it is about religion, whether you were taught by your family to hide it,
or you were taught by your family to flaunt it.”

3. Did your family come to the US before the Holocaust or because of it / after?
a. “I am one of the few people that have very detailed lineage of both sides of my family. My mom’s family was
taken into greece, made slaves, and sold to Germany. Then, they escaped mid-Holocaust by hiding under a
car, and they eventually made it to the United States because it was one of the only places they could go. I
used to have a very large family, but most of them died in the Holocaust. My grandma was one of twelve
siblings to survive. However, we did not get confirmation about all of our families' survival/deaths, so we have
to assume that a lot of my family is dead.”
Overall Conclusion:
Today the Holocaust is viewed as the emblematic manifestation of absolute evil. Its
revelation of the depths of human nature and the power of malevolent social and
governmental structures has made it an essential topic of ethical discourse in fields
as diverse as law, medicine, religion, government, and the military.

Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis would use mass killing centers called
concentration camps to carry out the systematic murder of roughly 6 million
European Jews in what would become known as the Holocaust.