What was The Holocaust?
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The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. It is important to note that the Jews were not the only enemy of the Nazis and that millions of people from other religious and political groups were also killed in the Holocaust, however the Jews were the only group specifically singled out for total annihilation. (Reference: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
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Causes of World War II & The Holocaust
- Resolution of World War I: Treaty of Versailles in 1919
- Peace settlement that ended WWI
- Required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations
- Military restrictions
- Economic reparations — pay money to the victors
- Shaming Germany
- Economic crisis in Germany
- Economic depression hit Germany in 1929 (global stock market crash) which led to extreme inflation or the rapidly decreasing value of the German Reichsmark
- Other effects of the economic crisis:
- High unemployment
- Hunger and starvation
- Hitler’s rise to power
- Germany's humiliating defeat in World War I combined with the economic crisis of the Great Depression created a perfect environment for a new leader to rise to power
- Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born former World War I soldier, was a captivating speaker who spoke to the millions of Germans who were desperate for change
- Hitler promised hope for a renewed and stronger Germany following the embarrassment of WWI
- In 1932, the Nazi Party won 33% of the vote
- Hitler was appointed Chancellor, head of the German government, in January 1933
- Naziism & extreme, race-based Nationalism
- Social Darwinism: there is a struggle between distinct races; race is based on fixed characteristics; some races are inferior to others
- Need for expansion (land & population) and purification (elimination of all “enemies” within the German state and its territories) — each race had a natural and biological inclination to expand territorially
- Before Germany went to war again, these behavioral enemies must be neutralized
- Criminals; asocials — homosexuals, physically and mentally disabled
- Political opponents — pacifists, Catholic clergy, Internationalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses
- Marxists — Social Democrats, Communists, Labor Unions, Anarchists
- Jews seen as racially inferior and an alien threat to the so-called purity of the German people
- Before Germany went to war again, these behavioral enemies must be neutralized
- Christian Anti-Semitism
- LONG history of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations, particularly Lutheranism
- Charge of Deicide — the idea that the Jews as a people are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and are to be condemned for their rejection of the Messiah
- Jews seen as sneaky, mischievous, and not to be trusted
- Accused of poisoning wells during the Black Plague
- Accused of being false converts during the Spanish Inquisition
- General feelings of contempt and/or indifference towards the Jewish people on the part of Christians as a whole; not all Christians hated the Jews, but many felt indifferent towards their suffering
- In the early years, some Jews did leave, but Hitler quickly enacted laws that made life for Jews very economically, politically, and socially difficult
- Jews had little power or influence
- Emigration and immigration laws prevented Jews from leaving Germany
- Hitler continued to expand into new territories which trapped Jews
- Jews considered themselves to be Germans, Poles, Russians, French, Italians — these were their homes, where their families had lived for hundreds of years
- Very vibrant Jewish communities in Europe until WWII which largely decimated the Jewish populations of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe
- As persecution continued, Jews were resettled in ghettos which isolated them as a community and forced them to live in poverty with few economic opportunities; all property was seized from them
Nazi Propaganda
Important Vocabulary
Antisemitism: hatred of Jews as a group or a concept; belief that the Jews as a people are inferior; prejudice or promotion of stereotypes about the Jewish people or Judaism as a religion (see propaganda above)
Genocide: in 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including:
Holocaust: the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators
Kristallnacht: November 9-10, 1938; Also known as the “night of broken glass;” acts of extreme violence and vandalism that the Nazis carried out against the Jewish people in Germany; Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and businesses, and killed close to 100 Jews
Nationalism: Devotion, especially excessive or undiscriminating devotion, to the interests or culture of a particular nation-state
Naziism: the ideology and practice of the National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazi) under Adolf Hitler, especially the policy of racist nationalism, national expansion, and state control of the economy
Nuremberg Laws: series of laws imposed on the Jewish people in Germany by Hitler which stripped Jews of their citizenship rights and reduced them to mere “subjects” of the state
Racism: historical, institutional, social, and political practices that enforce the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics
Genocide: in 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Holocaust: the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators
Kristallnacht: November 9-10, 1938; Also known as the “night of broken glass;” acts of extreme violence and vandalism that the Nazis carried out against the Jewish people in Germany; Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and businesses, and killed close to 100 Jews
Nationalism: Devotion, especially excessive or undiscriminating devotion, to the interests or culture of a particular nation-state
Naziism: the ideology and practice of the National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazi) under Adolf Hitler, especially the policy of racist nationalism, national expansion, and state control of the economy
Nuremberg Laws: series of laws imposed on the Jewish people in Germany by Hitler which stripped Jews of their citizenship rights and reduced them to mere “subjects” of the state
- Forbid marriages between Jews and non-Jews
- Jews could not vote or hold public office
- Jews were not considered citizens of the German state
- A Jew is anyone descended from at least three Jewish grandparents
- Jews could only hold names deemed by the German state to be Jewish
Racism: historical, institutional, social, and political practices that enforce the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics