Holocaust

Holocaust Study Guide Holocaust Page The Holocaust

Study Guide}}[[image:http://wzus1.ask.com/r?t=a&d=us&s=a&c=p&ti=1&ai=30751&l=dir&o=0&sv=0a5c423f&ip=d06c9c12&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ri.net%2Fschools%2FSmithfield%2Fgms%2Fwalls%2Fholocaust.jpg Approximately six million Jews were persecuted and murdered by the Nazi's during the Holocaust Era. The Nazi's believed they were a superior race and that the Jews were inferior to them. Several other people groups were targeted by the Nazi's as well. Gypsies, the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples were persecuted as well as communists, socialists, Jehova's Witnesses and homosexuals for their behaviors and beliefs. By 1933, the Jewish population had reached over nine million. Most of the population lived in countries ruled by Nazi's or in countries that would eventually be taken over by the Nazi's during World War II. By 1945, every two out of three Jews had been murdered. These killings took place under the "Final Solution". This was the Nazi's policy of murdering the Jews that resided in Europe. Over two hundred thousand Gypsies were murdered at this time as well. Thousands of mentally and physically disabled people were also killed through a program the Nazi's named "The Euthanasia Program". In the early years of the Nazi's rule, concentration camps were set up and established to detain suspected "opponents". Many different racial and ethnic backgrounds were incarcerated based upon hatred. Ghettos were created in order to control the Jewish population and conduct the deportation. The German authorities also created forced-labor camps that the Jews were sent to and were forced to live in. The holocaust followed the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The German SS and police carried out most of the murders, under the rule of Nazi leaders.
 * __ History __**

**__The Ghettos__** The name of the camps created in order to control the Jewish population and hold them in secure locations came from the term "ghettos" or the Jewish quarters in Venice where they were forced to live. Various authorities in the 15th and 16th centuries ordered these ghettos to be created. During World War II, the Germans controlled the ghettos forced the Jewish popultaion to live under devistating conditions. They were located in cities and were baracaded from the rest of the population in surrounding areas. The purpose of the ghettos was to segregate and separate the Jewish people from the others. There were over 1,000 ghettos created during this time in Poland and the Soviet Union alone. Some ghettos lasted for years, while others only survived for only a few months. Once the "Final Solution" was in order, or the Nazi's plan of murdering all Jews, the ghettos were destroyed. All residents of the ghettos were either shot and then dumped into mass graves or were deported by train to killing centers. Only a few Jews were deported to concentration camps. Either way, most of the Jews that resided in the ghettos were eventually killed. Few Jews escaped death during this time. There were three types of ghettos: closed, open and destruction. The largest ghetto existed in Warsaw, Poland which contained over 400,000 Jews. They were contained in an area of 1.3 miles. Other major cities that contained ghettos were Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok,Lvov, Lubin, Vilna, Kovno, and Minsik. Tens of thousands of Jews were also deported into other ghettos in the east. the ews were forced to wear identificaton, badges or armbands and were forced to also perform labor tasks for the Germans. The ghettos police force carried out the demands and orders of the ruling Nazi leaders. The Germans would kill any police officer who failed to carry out his or her orders completely. The residents of the ghettos frequently were involved in illegal activities. They were known to smuggle food, medicine, and weapons without the leaders knowing. Some leaders did not mind the illegal activities because it helped keep the Jews alive. The Jews also practiced religion. However, if the Nazi leaders thought the ceremonies were getting out of hand, they would kill the leaders ruthlessly. The Nazi leaders also killed anyone who practiced schooling or education in the ghettos at this time. Some of the ghetto residents turned on the leaders and conducted uprisings. They revolted against the authorities and in some cases, these revolts led to the destruction of the ghettos. In Hungary, over 440,000 Jews were placed in ghettos and then deported to the Hungarian border. Most of these Hungarian Jews were sent to the Auschwitz killing center. These ghettos played a key role in the control, dehumanization and murders of the Jews during this time.

__** The Nazi Camps **__ Around 20,000 camps were established between the years of 1933 and 1945. They were used for many purposes including forced labor, transit, and extermination. In 1933, detention facilities were created in order to detain several different peoples. These facilities later became known as the concentration camps. The camps recieved the name "contentration camps" because the people were "concentrated" physically. As the Germans acquired contries, the Jews within those countries were also acquired and then deported into these camps. After the Germans took over Poland, many forced-labor camps were opened and many males were excecuted. Thousands of prisoners were killed because of starvation, exhaustion or exposure. Nazi leaders and police guarded the camps and in several nazi camps, doctors performed medical experiments on the prisoners. The Nazi's also created POW camps or prisoner or war camps. They housed and gassed many POW's and also shot them to death.

This picture portrays the final stage of Genocide that the nazis used at the concentration camps. In the extermination camps, gassing chambers were set up for mass murders. They were very effient and impersonal for the nazi's who were carrying out the murders. Before the Jews and other ethnicities were sent to the extermination camps, they were deported and stayed in transit camps. It was their last stop before going to the extermination camps to be killed. All in all, over three million Jews were killed in extermination camps. The murders of all of these people were carried out by nazi's and German leaders, or police. Only a small number of people survived the camps. ---Victims of the Holocaust -Mobile killing units or Einstanzgruppen
 * __Liberation of Nazi Camps__**

In 1944, the Allied troops began to move across Europe and came across Nazi Consentration camps. By this time the prisoners had been in forced marches, they were suffering illness from lack of food. Suprised by the Allies advance the Germans began an attempt to hide evidence of the mass murders. They would burn down cremetories where millions of prisoners had been burned. But, because of the hasty evacuations of the camps, gas chambers were left standing leaving evidence of the mass murders. In the summer of 1944 the soviets had overran Belzec, Bobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The germans had dismantled these camps in 1943 after most of the jews in Poland had already been killed. The soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest consentraion camp, in 1945. There they found hundreds of thousands men's suits, 800,000 womans outfits, and more than 14,000 pound of human hair. U.S. forces liberated 20,ooo prisoners from buchenwald in April.

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Bibliography: http://www.ushmmorg/wlc/en/?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=10003&gclid=CP7-nby3iZoCFWNM5QodSHYhFw