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Germany - Genocide 1

The document provides an overview of the Holocaust, detailing its historical context, key events, and the systematic genocide of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany during World War II. It discusses the rise of Nazism, the implementation of antisemitic laws, and the establishment of concentration camps, as well as acts of resistance against the regime. The Holocaust is framed as a significant moral and ethical issue, emphasizing the importance of remembrance and understanding its implications in various fields.

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15 views18 pages

Germany - Genocide 1

The document provides an overview of the Holocaust, detailing its historical context, key events, and the systematic genocide of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany during World War II. It discusses the rise of Nazism, the implementation of antisemitic laws, and the establishment of concentration camps, as well as acts of resistance against the regime. The Holocaust is framed as a significant moral and ethical issue, emphasizing the importance of remembrance and understanding its implications in various fields.

Uploaded by

Shreeya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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GENOCIDE

Elective - 4 credits / Trigger warning.

JGLS / 2025

Juan Vallejo
THE HOLOCAUST - GERMANY

• The Nazi Empire (Chap 20) – Oxford Handbook

• A Crime (Chap 2) – Power S.

• The Holocaust (Britannica)

• The Jewish Holocaust (Chap 6)

• 2 videos
The Path to Nazi Genocide – Holocaust Museum (v)
• Germany Struggles after World War I Defeat
• The Rise of Nazism
• Adolf Hitler Appointed Chancellor
• Building a "National Community"
• Nazis Enact Antisemitic Laws
• German Jews Become Outcasts
• Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass
• World War II Begins
• Germany Invades the Soviet Union
• The Final Solution
• Auschwitz
• Liberation and the end of the Holocaust
What?
• Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah (“Catastrophe”), Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban (“Destruction”),
the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children
and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

• The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew
word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God.

• This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program—
the extermination camps—the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria
and open fires.

• Before this one, the Armenian Genocide was also referred to as “the holocaust”.
When?
• WWII

• 1939 - 1945

• The Nazi persecution of Jews


began soon after Adolf Hitler
became chancellor of Germany in
1933 with a boycott of Jewish
businesses and the dismissal of
Jewish civil servants.
…The origins
• Even before the Nazis came to power
in Germany in 1933, they had made
no secret of their anti-Semitism. As
early as 1919 Adolf Hitler had written:

• “Rational anti-Semitism, however,


must lead to systematic legal
opposition.…Its final objective must
unswervingly be the removal of the
Jews altogether.”
Nürnberg Laws (1935)
• Jews lost their citizenship

• About 7,500 Jewish


businesses were gutted
Kristallnacht pogrom - 1938
• On the evening of November 9, 1938, carefully orchestrated anti-Jewish violence
“erupted” throughout the Reich, which since March had included Austria.

• Over the next 48 hours rioters burned or damaged more than 1,000 synagogues
and ransacked and broke the windows of more than 7,500 businesses.

• Some 30,000 Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 60 were arrested and sent
to concentration camps.

• Police stood by as the violence—often the action of neighbours, not strangers—


occurred.
Targeted groups
• Jews
• Roma (Gypsies)
• Communists
• Political leaders
• Intellectuals
• Homosexuals
• The “mentally retarded”
• “Physically disabled”
• The “emotionally disturbed”
Mein Kampf
• “My Struggle”

• Political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler. It


was his only complete book, and the work
became the bible of National Socialism in
Germany’s Third Reich.

• Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1927,


and an abridged edition appeared in 1930. By
1939 it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had
been translated into 11 languages.
Underground resistance
• Underground resistance movements
arose in several countries, and Jewish
risings took place against overwhelming
odds.

• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Poland).

• Raoul Wallenberg

• Oskar Schindler
Underground resistance
• Jews resisted in the forests, in the ghettos, and
even in the death camps.

• They fought alone and alongside resistance


groups in France, Yugoslavia, and Russia.

• On April 19, 1943, nine months after the massive


deportations of Warsaw’s Jews to Treblinka had
begun, the Jewish resistance, led by 24-year-old
Mordecai Anielewicz, mounted the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising.
Concentration camps, ghettos, crematoria
• On January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich convened the Wannsee
Conference at a lakeside villa in Berlin to organize the “final solution to
the Jewish question.”

• Around the table were 15 men representing government agencies


necessary to implement such a bold and sweeping policy.

• “Another possible solution to the problem has now taken the place of
emigration, i.e., the evacuation of the Jews to the east.… Practical
experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance
in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.”
“Einsatzgruppen”
• Entering conquered Soviet territories
alongside the Wehrmacht (the German
armed forces) were 3,000 men of the
Einsatzgruppen (“Deployment Groups”)

• Special mobile killing units.

• Their task was to murder Jews, Soviet


commissars, and Roma in the areas
conquered by the army.
…summarizing
• Today the Holocaust is viewed as the emblematic
manifestation of absolute evil.

• Its revelation of the depths of human nature and the


power of malevolent social and governmental
structures has made it an essential topic of ethical
discourse in fields as diverse as law, medicine,
religion, government, and the military.

• Many survivors report that they heard a final plea


from those who were killed: “Remember! Do not let
the world forget.”
Workshop
1. How does Otto D. Tolischus describe the Nazi state?

2. What does the author say about “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”?

3. What are the two factors that Otto D.. Tolischus emphasise in Lemkin´s book?

4. Must “the entire German people be held responsible for the results”, as Otto D. suggests?

5. Do you agree with this assertion? Why?: “Both nationalism and socialism, which derogated
the individual and put more and more power in the hands of a centralised State, helped pave
the way for this, but it was the demagogues of the new faith who gave it its present savage
content…”

https://www.nytimes.com/1945/01/21/archives/twentiethcentury-moloch-the-naziinspired-totalitarian-state.html
CREDITS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
• https://www.thehindu.com/ne • The Holocaust
ws/international/Mein-Kampf- https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust
published-in-Germany-for-
first-time-since- • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRcNq4OY
TyE (crucial – 38 mins.)
WWII/article13988460.ece
• https://www.coe.int/en/web/p
ortal/holocaust-
• The Nazi Empire (Chap 20) remembrance (timeline)
– Oxford Handbook

• A Crime (Chap 2) – Power


S.

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