What images or ideas come to mind

when you read the following word:

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ghetto.

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 Today’s Topic:
Why did Nazis build ghettos and camps?
What was life like there for Jews?

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 During the 1930s, the Nazis used
terror and discrimination to
encourage Jews to leave Germany.

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Anti-Jewish boycott
Many Jews left Germany “voluntarily.”

Some were forced out when the Nuremberg Laws

stripped Jews of their citizenship.

Others realized that things

would only get worse after 5

Kristallnacht in 1938.
 Small numbers of Jews were
admitted to the U.S., Canada, and
elsewhere, but strict immigration
quotas prevented this number from
being very high.

(1930s)
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 Despite increasing evidence of
persecution, some Jewish refugees
were even sent back to Germany,
where many of them later perished.

(1930s)
St. Louis 7
 Many Jews moved out of Germany
to live with relatives in neighboring
Poland, which had the largest
Jewish population in the world.

(1930s)
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(1930s)
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 The exodus of Jews from Germany
to Poland proved to be a case of
“out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
Why?

(1930s)
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 In 1939, Germany conquered
Poland...
• Suddenly, Hitler had millions more Jews
within the borders of his empire – six times
as many as had existed in pre-war
Germany.

• Soon he would also

invade the Soviet
Union, inheriting
millions more Jews.
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 Hitler’s plan to simply “push” Jews out of his
growing empire would not work. Where were
they supposed to go?
Mein Fuhrer, our
successful invasion
This is intolerable! of Poland has
We must find a resulted in us
“final solution” to acquiring millions
the Jewish Right away, more Jews!
problem! Mein
Fuhrer!

Adolf Hitler Jew 12

Reinhard Heydrich
 At first the Nazis devised a
program to centralize and isolate
the Jews in the newly conquered
territory.

They did this by creating “ghettos”

– neighborhoods where Jews
would be forced to live apart from
mainstream society.
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 Most Jews spent years locked
away in “ghettos” -- unaware of
what would happen to them next.

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 Life in the ghettos was difficult.
• jobs were scarce

• food was limited – people starved

• conditions were crowded, disease spread

• Nazis “rounded up” Jews periodically and took them away

on trains to points unknown.
• Eventually all ghettos were “liquidated” when the camps15
were ready
 To make matters worse, the Nazis relied on
Jewish leaders to keep order in the ghettos.

These Jewish councils (called “Judenrat”) were

expected to decide which Jews got work permits
and which Jews got put on trains to concentration
camps…

Bialystock
Judenrat
(Poland)

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 “Give Me Your Children!”
“A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They are asking
us to give up the best we possess -- the children and the
elderly. I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this
sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I
must stretch out my hands and beg. Brothers and
sisters: Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers:
Give me your children! . . . “
-- Chaim Rumkowski, Chairman of Judenrat, Lodz
Ghetto, September 4, 1942

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To this day there is controversy about whether
the Judenrat are heroes or villains of the
Holocaust.

Rumkowski chose children and old people to

sacrifice to the Nazis, but he is credited with
preventing the Lodz ghetto from being
“liquidated” until the last possible moment – a
fact that may have saved tens of thousands of
lives.

What do you think?

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 Ghettoization proved to be
expensive and complicated for the
Nazis to manage in the midst of a
war…

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 So almost as soon as they had
been established, the Nazis began
emptying or “liquidating” the
ghettos.

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At first the Nazis liquidated the
ghettos by simply shooting the
inhabitants en masse.

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22
23
 But this “solution” to Hitler’s
“Jewish problem” created its own
complications.

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Mass shootings didn’t work well.

-- They were slow.

-- They were messy.

-- They were noisy.

-- They wasted bullets.

-- The killers broke down mentally. 25

 Mein Fuhrer, we have
a problem!

The stress of
Lets create secret
shooting Jews is
camps to causing our elite
concentrate the Jews. killing units to break
We will work them as down! People are
slaves, and then kill As starting
my Fuhrerto ask
them with poison gas! wishes!
questions! We need
an alternate plan.

Heinrich Himmler, “Architect 26

of the Holocaust”
 The Nazis built a huge
concentration camp system
connected by railroads.

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“Work Will Set You Free”
There were two main types camps:

labor camps
&
death camps

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 Major
MajorDeath
LaborCamps
Camps

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What do you notice about the locations of the two types of camps?
 Concentration Camps
Labor Camps Death Camps

Non- No.
Jews/Gypsies?
Forced Labor (sometimes)

Crematoriums
(ovens)
Mass Death

Gas Chambers No.

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Upon arrival at a camp, Jews would
give up all possessions and be
sorted by gender and age.

(Many never saw their families again after this point.) 31

Unlucky prisoners would be sent
immediately to the “showers”…

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Others were selected by Nazi
doctors to be the subjects of
gruesome Nazi science
experiments.

Dr. Josef Mengele –

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“Death Doctor of Auschwitz”
Still other able bodied Jews would be selected,
shaved, tattooed, given a uniform, and sent to
work as slaves until disposed of by the Nazis.

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Many Jews died from hunger, disease,
or by being worked to death.

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There was no escape.

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In 1944, the Soviet army approached Poland. The
Germans began to march Jews at gunpoint in the
snow to Germany. They blew up the camps with
dynamite to hide their crimes.

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…tens of thousands more died on the way.
When the war ended in 1945, Allied
armies “liberated” the camps, and
found the few survivors near death.

Charles Payne,
Obama’s uncle
Liberator of
Buchenwald
Starving prisoners had to eat 38
carefully to avoid dying.
 These names reverberate
throughout through history.

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 Chelmno
Death Camp

“gas vans”

300,000 murdered 40
Sobibor
Death Camp

250,000 Murdered 41
 Belzec
Death Camp, Poland

600,000 murdered
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Majdanek
Death Camp, Poland

320,000 murdered 43
Treblinka
Death Camp, Poland

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500,000 Murdered
 Auschwitz
Death Camp, Poland

1,100,000 murdered 45
 Concentration Camps

Buchenwald, Germany, 60,000

Bergen-Belsen, Germany, 35,000

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Review:

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 From
When
The the trains,
the Jews
Using
rounded-up in Jews would
Jews
the ghetto
community werebe no
were
records,lined up and
crammed
longer “selected”
useful,
Nazis intowould
they
identified to be
either be
“ghettos”
and in
While
packed
sent
nearby
food.
Many
Camp
Hitler’s
in the
into
to Laborcattle
“rounded
Atowns,
wouldlucky
where
ghettos,
Camps
up”
where
enfew
diethey “Final
carstoand
were
route.
would
most
be
all Jews
they
be sent
people
shipped
worked
lived
killedto
Solution”.
did not
from their
worksometimes
as
immediately
have
totoconcentration
death, or sent adequate
camps.
to
homes.
slaves
a Death
for years.
in a gasinchamber.
factories.

Jewish “shtetls”
(villages)

factories
ghettos

Labor Camps

trains
roundups

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Death Camps
With the horrors of the Holocuast
over, questions remained.

Could survivors be reunited

with their families?
Where would the
What would happen survivors go?
to the Nazi
perpetrators?

Questions How had this horrible

event happened?

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 We were too terrified to
We were just ask where the Jews
following the will were going!
of the German
people!
Nazi
Avg. German “I was just
official
following
orders like
any good
Who is to blame soldier!”
for the Holocaust?
I did not
kill a
single We did
person! not know
how bad
I just moved it was!
people from
point A to
point B! Nazi guard
Hitler

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Train operator Allied leaders
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The End.
Death Camps

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