6.6: The Holocaust Begins

Illinois Social Science Standards

SS.H.1.6-8.LC: Classify series of historical events and developments as examples of change and/or continuity.

SS.H.1.6-8.MdC: Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.

SS.H.1.6-8.MC: Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant.

Bell Ringer Question:

Important Vocabulary:

Anti-Semitism - hostility to or prejudice against Jews.
Genocide - the deliberate killing or destruction of a large group of people.
Euthanasia - term describing the use of medical knowledge to kill an individual who is believed to be not capable of living a normal life.
Concentration Camp - a place where large numbers of people are pesecuted.
Death Camp - a prison camp in which many die from mass execution.
Final Solution - was a Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews during World War II.
Holocaust - the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz.

Chapter Summary: Chapter 7

The Holocaust Begins

In 1939, under the orders of Adolf Hitler the Nazi government began the execution of individuals who were deemed incurably ill. Under secret orders from Adolf Hitler German doctors began medically killing mentally and physically disabled children in hospitals all throughout Germany. In nursing homes and hospitals panels of doctors debated and agreed to euthanize, or medically kill the elderly. Adolf Hitler was practicing for the task of carrying out one of the world's largest genocides.Following the invasion of Poland the Holocaust began. Jews and other minority groups were rounded up and sent to GHettos where they awaited deportation to Concentration and Death Camps. Although many were transported to these camps, many more were simply murdered as the German army advance through Europe. THe Nazi Germans targeted anyone they deemed racially inferior. In 1833 the Jewish population of Europe was just over nine million Jews, and many lived in the countries that Nazi Germany was allied with or invaded during World War II. there were few places the Jew could run.

Aktion T4

The Ghetto

With the start of the Holocaust the Germans began to deport and remove Jews from their homes and force them to live in walled parts of major cities. The Ghettos were set up to segregate the Jews from the rest of the population of Europe. As the Ghetto filled, the Germans would force the Jews onto trucks and trains and transport them to Concentration Camps and Death Camps where they were either worked as slaves, or murdered. Since the Ghettos were merely a staging ground, the Germans did little to feed and care for the Jews. Many Ghetto inhabitants died from diseases and hunger while waiting for their deportation. Ghettos were cold, filthy, and overcrowded making life in the Ghettos difficult.

Transportation to the Concentration Camp

After Jews were taken from the Ghetto's, they were loaded onto trains that were bound for one of the Concentration Camps or Death Camps in Germany or Poland. Jews were crammed into cattle boxcars, often with no food or water, and only a small bucket to be used as a restroom. Many would suffocate in the boxcars as they were crammed into the trains. Women, Men, and children were all crammed into the trains. In order to keep them calm, the Nazi's fed them lies that they were being relocated to work-camps and farms in southern Germany. Many Jews realized what was happening, and begin to write short notes on scraps of paper, and threw them out of the windows in hopes that someone might find and record their last thoughts and prayers.

The Concentration Camp - Auschwitz and Dachau

Once the trains reached the Concentration camps, the Jews were sorted by gender, age, and health. Those that were physically able to work were sent to the camp barracks where they would perform slave labor. Sick and injured Jewish slaves would often be murdered. Those that were too old, weak, sick, pregnant, or young were immediately sent to the gas chambers located at many Concentration Camps. Few survived or escaped the Concentration Camps, and many families were separated upon arrival, never to see one another again.

The Death Camp - Treblinka and Birkenau

Many Jews were seen a unfit to become slave labor. As a result many Jews were loaded into trains and sent to specialized Concentration Camps, known as Death Camps. The Death Camps had only one function, to end the lives of the Jews. Upon arriving the Jews were unloaded from the trains, stripped naked, and their heads shaved. They were then quickly marched into a concrete bunker made to appear like a massive shower. There the Germans poured in Zyklon B pellets into the fake showers where the Jews were then suffocated by the gasses. As many as 2,000 Jews could be gassed at a time. There the bodies were collected and moved to an adjacent furnace, where the bodies were cremated, or burned. Many that worked at Concentration Camps found themselves at the Death Camp's eventually.

Hans Stark, New Arrivals at Auschwitz (1945)

At another, later gassing--also in autumn 1941--Grabner ordered me to pour Zyklon B into the opening because only one medical orderly had shown up. During a gassing Zyklon B had to be poured through both openings of the gas-chamber room at the same time. This gassing was also a transport of 200-250 Jews, once again men, women and children. As the Zyklon B--as already mentioned--was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them. I did not look through the opening because it had to be closed as soon as the Zyklon B had been poured in. After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten to fifteen minutes, the gas chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggedly all over the place. It was a dreadful sight.

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