The Holocaust By: Ann Singleton
WWI pitted Germany, Austria-hungry, and their allies France, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. When Germany was defeated, the country faced serious problems. War debt had consumed Germany and it could not pay what was owed. The country's economy collapsed. The Germans looked for someone to blame for their problem.
This is a Nazis poster from 1933. The caption reads "Hitler is rebuilding. Help out! Buy German goods'. "
Members of the National Socialist Party, called Nazis, wanted to renew German pride by focusing on ethnic background. They believed only the Aryan, were pure German. Nazis felt that only who they considered Aryan should be aloud in Germany.
This is a Nazis Swastika.
People of other backgrounds, mainly Jews, were considered blamed for the problems that Germany faced. Many Germans agreed with the Nazis and belived that the Nazis leader Adolf Hitler was their savior. The Holocaust began with the rise of power of Hitler. Then it countinued gradually.
These pictures are of Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler, was also a painter. He Had produced hundreds of works and sold his paintings and postcards to try to earn a living during his years Vienna, Austria. However, he was not successful. A number of his paintings were recovered after World War II and have been sold at auctions for tens of thousands of dollars. Others were seized by the U.S. Army and are still held by the U.S. government.
These pieces of art were painted by Hitler.
Germany had many diverse groups: Catholic, Lutherans, Jews, Jehovan's Witnesses, and others. They believed since the majority of them were Jews, by getting ride of them, the country would gain power and respect. The Nazis plan for getting rid of them was called the Final Solution. Later to be called the Holocaust.
Hitler sent gangs into the streets to destroy Jewish home, businesses, and synagogues throughout Germany. This event was called Kristallnacht, or "Night of Brocken Glass," resulting in the looting and distruction of thousands of Jewish business and homes.
About 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, but they were not the only victims. Another 5 million people where Poles, Gypsies, Political Prisoners, and people German goverment deemed undesirable were also killed.
Hitler convinced Germans that their country needs him to take greater control if they want to find there way out of poverty and misery. Hitler made a law that allowed beggars, unemployed workers, alcoholics, homeless people, and political enemies to be sent to concentration camps.
On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Inside Poland, the German army forced Jewish Poles to move from their homes to ghettos in cities such as Warsaw and Lodz. These Ghettos were surrounded by barbed wire, brick walls, and armed guards.
They were sent to places like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. " Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase meaning "work sets you free." The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other concentrate camps. This was a metaphor, because the only way you would be free is through death.
By the early 1940's, the Germans ran 5,000 concentration camps, including hundreds of small subcamps. When they decided to move people from the Ghetto's into Poland they loaded people up in freight cars. They had no seats, no water or food, no bathrooms, and no heat.
Once at the camp, young children and the elderly were immediately taken to be killed. They could not work, and the Nazis were only interested in labor. They didn't want to waste food and housing space on the workless.
Once they arrived, they were unloaded like cattle. (like passengers arriving at Ellis Island) there personal belongings were confiscated and they were sent to Germany to support the war.
The camps demanded that they shave their heads, that their bodies washed, and they were sprayed for lice. They wore striped outfits made out of heavy, rough cotton.
Women and girls lived in one side of the camp, men and boys in another. Meals consisted of dry bread and watery soup, a diet of slow starvation.
Fences and guards made it almost impossible to escape, and the consequences for failing a escape were horrible. Any prisoners caught trying to escape were shot, along with anyone who was caught helping the escape.
In Auschwitz, (the largest camp) it was so bad that about several hundred prisoners died a day. People were symmetrically murdered daily. They also received tattoos allowing the Nazis to keep accurate record of there victims. The prisoner were marked forever.
In 1941, Hitler began focusing on the mass murder of Jews. There final solution was the programmed extermination of Jews and other undesirables in gas chambers. Gas chambers were built where hundreds of victims could be killed at once with a poisonous gas. They also used ovens to burn the corpse near the gas chambers. The prisoners would be told they were getting a shower. And instead of water coming out of the pipes, it was poisonous gases.
In the camps, death was mostly caused by malnutrition, starvation, beating, or disease.
The victims were gasses, there bodies were incinerated in a oven or burried in a massive grave yards.
Birkenau, which was part of Auschwitz, had four gas chambers and killed up to 8,000 people a day. The oven was designed to cremate the remands to pick up the pace. The Nazis grew trees to try to cover up the evidence.
One year after the extermination camps began, 1 million Jews, woman, and children had been murdered. The death rate was too low to satisfy the Nazis, so more death chambers were built. To add horror, the prisoners were forced to build the gas chambers they soon were to be murdered in.
Anne Marie Frank was a German-born diary keeper and writer. She is one of the most talked about Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary, "The Diary of a Young Girl", which documents her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, is one of the world's most widely known book.
During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Anne Frank received a blank diary as one of her presents for her 13th birthday. This was the book Anne used as her diary. She began to write in it. Anne′s older sister Margot received a letter to report to a Nazi work camp in Germany, so Margot and Anne went into hiding with their father Otto and mother Edith. They were joined by Hermann van Pels, Otto's business partner, including his wife Auguste and their son Peter. Their hiding place was in Her fathers company building in Amsterdam. The rooms were concealed behind a movable bookcase. With the assistance of a group of Otto Frank's trusted colleagues, they remained hidden for two years and a month.
The health of the survivors was delicate. They had gone so long without food, they could not digest normal foods. And some of them died from eating too much too soon. Their bodies simply could not handle food. Others were so near death, even though they were saved the still died. Eleven million had been killed as a result of the Nazis party. Roughly two-thirds of all the Jews living in Europe were killed in the Holocaust.
" This museum is not for the dead alone, nor even for the survivors who had been beautifully represented; it is perhaps most of all for those of us who where not there at all. To learn lessons, to deepen our memories and our humanity." - Bill Clinton
Holocaust denial often includes the following claims: that Nazi Germany's Final Solution was aimed only at deporting Jews from the Reich, but that it did not include the extermination of Jews; that Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas chambers to mass murder Jews; and that the actual number of Jews killed was significantly lower than the historically accepted figure of 5 to 6 million.
Holocaust survivors in attendance, it was a step back into a time of fear, loss, and despair. For those with no personal experience of the Holocaust, it was a step into the most brutal period on human history.
I think this project helped because it helps us learn interesting things, without having to do book work. It is more fun and interesting when your friends teach it to you.
Created with images by Son of Groucho - "Holocaust Memorial Museum" • Bon Adrien - "yad vashem"