The Jewish Holocaust: An Overview

Mark Blanchfield

ENG 102 Sec. 104

Larry Nueberger

4 April 2011
 Blanchfield 2

A brief overview of what happened

The Holocaust was brought about by Nazi Germany during World War II. It

entailed the horrific slaughtering of six million Jewish people. The Nazi party enacted

laws that made it a crime to be a Jew and eventually the punishment was death in which

all Jews had to be killed. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews and confined them to ghettos

awaiting execution. While waiting they were subject to inhumane living conditions. The

Nazi persecution was brought about by the SS (Protection Squad), the SA (Storm

Troopers) and the SD (Death's Head Units). In 1941 mass murders of Jews started and

the Nazis started deporting Jews to labor camps or death camps. The persecution started

in 1933 and the mass murdering ended with the liberation in 1945.

The Nazis rise to power

The Nazis had a slow start to power according to Yad Vashem’s web site. Adolf

Hitler became associated with the National Socialist

Party in 1919 and quickly became its leader; the group

was small at that time and did not carry much political

clout. In 1923 the party carried out an unsuccessful

uprising in attempt to gain power. Following the

uprising Hitler was imprisoned and later released. After

this he regrouped the faction. In 1930 the Nazi party

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power rose to power with elections brought about by an
http://bit.ly/fTsIiT

economic crisis and other issues. They were represented

in the Reichstag (parliamentary house) by 107 delegates. Hitler became Chancellor in

 Blanchfield 3

January 1933 after the Nazis gained control of the parliament and was given an order by

the president to create a government (“Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution”).

Following Hitler’s enactment to Chancellor, he quickly started passing legislation

to strip the Jews of their rights. After only five weeks of Hitler’s coming to power,

attacks had already begun toward the Jews and anyone who was thought to oppose the

Reich. Within seven weeks following Hitler’s appointment to power, the Dachau

concentration camp was established. Germany quickly became a police state and the Nazi

party started using anti-Semitic propaganda to demonize the Jews. They portrayed the

Jews as the sons of the Devil and as liars (Yad Vashem, “Rise of the Nazis and Beginning

of Persecution”, “Antisemitism”). While Hitler was Chancellor his power was limited by

the laws of the state (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), “Germany:

Establishment of the Nazi Dictatorship.”). According to Adam Jones the German

president died in mid-1934 and Hitler took over the position, which led to extreme anti-

Semitic legislation (“Case Study: The Jewish Holocaust, 1933-45.”)

The Nuremberg Laws. On September 15,

1935 the Nuremberg Laws were implemented. There

were two different laws. The first law was the Reich

Citizenship Law, and it defined who citizens of the

Reich were and their rights. The second law stripped

many rights from Jews. They were no longer allowed

to marry German citizens or employ female Germans

Chart for the Nuremberg Laws

http://bit.ly/gzBO4Q
 Blanchfield 4

under the age of forty-five as domestic servants among other things (Gavin, “The

Nuremberg Laws”).

Moreover, the implementation of these laws brought Jewish segregation and was

just the beginning of more laws to strip rights from Jews. After the Nuremburg Laws

were implemented, much debate was brought about among Nazi leaders on how to

determine who is a Jew. This led to the creation of a chart for the leaders to determine

who is a Jew, half Jew or an Aryan. After these laws were in effect, the Jews thought the

worst was over which was true for several more years (Gavin, “The Nuremberg Laws”).

Kristallnacht

Later came Kristallnacht referred to as “the night of broken glass”, and as stated

by Gavin, was brought about by a Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan who was

living in Paris at the time. The Germans by order of the SS deported many thousands of

Jews to Poland and the Grynspan family was among them. When the Jews arrived at the

border the Polish would not let them enter the country (“The Night of Broken Glass”).

Herschel was told of this and became enraged over what happened to his family.

In addition, he was looking at being removed from France because his request for

permanent residency was denied. In his fury he went to the German embassy and killed

one of the officials. Hitler’s propaganda minister used the killing to bring about a plan for

a “popular uprising” against the Jews, in which there would be no visible ties with

Hitler’s administration. However, his plan failed and the uprising was carried out by the

SA, SS and party leaders (Gavin, “The Night of Broken Glass”)

 Blanchfield 5

On the night of November 9, 1938, all throughout Germany and Austria, these

men broke out the windows of Jewish businesses and homes. They also burned

synagogues. There were thousands of businesses

and over two hundred synagogues destroyed.

Close to one hundred Jewish men were killed. In

addition, there were around 25,000 Jews taken to

the Dachau concentration camp and many other

camps that were already established (Gavin, “The

The day after Kristallnacht
http://bit.ly/14tTBJ Night of Broken Glass”).

In 1938 the Nazis implemented many new

laws to strip Jews of every right. Some of the laws invalidated all Jewish passports and

required all Jews to add a name that would identify them as Jews. Nazi leaders pushed for

the “Aryanization” of all businesses forcing all Jewish business owners to sell to non-

Jewish Germans.

Nazi storm troopers conducted deportations of all Polish Jews back to their homeland.

Poland was unprepared for the large number of refugees and forced the deported Jews to

stay in abandon buildings in the border town of Zbaszyn (Yad Vashem, “1938”,

“Zbaszyn”).

The Rounding up of Jews. Following this the Germans invaded Poland in 1939

and quickly conquered it. There were close to two million Jews living in Poland at that

time. Many had emigrated from Germany and they fell into the hands of the Nazis once

again. At this time the Nazis no longer tried to appease the rest of the world with their

actions. The SS squad joined other military units and wreaked havoc on the Jews and the
 Blanchfield 6

Poles. The Jews were required to wear “the badge of shame” which was the Star of David

on an armband or a lapel to identify them (Yad Vashem, “Conquest of Poland and

Attacks on Jews”).

By the fall of 1939 the Nazis had conquered most of Europe and established

ghettos in Eastern Europe. There were close to one-thousand built, encompassing small

sections of a city. Many were surrounded by brick walls. They imprisoned most of the

European Jews in these ghettos while they were awaiting deportation to extermination or

labor camps (Yad Vashem, “Expansion of German Conquest and Policy towards Jews”).

The living conditions of these ghettos were inhumane. There was widespread

starvation and sickness throughout brought about

by food rations. In addition, the ghettos were

extremely over crowded. For example, the

Warsaw Ghetto located in Poland, was the

largest and had a peak population of 450,000 in a

The Warsaw ghetto
http://bit.ly/dUs411
1.3 square mile area (USHMM, “Ghettos”).

Over 80,000 Jews died in Warsaw (Yad Vashem,

“Warsaw”).

Many Jews did not stay in the ghettos for long; they were deported to ether death

or concentration camps (USHMM, “Ghettos”). There were twenty-five major

concentration camps and over a thousand other camps which were designed to force slave

labor on its occupants (Vogelsang and Larsen, “The Concentration Camps, 1933-45”).

The living conditions at these camps were brutal. The men were crammed into

bunks. In addition, the individuals worked on average twelve hours a day and were
 Blanchfield 7

malnourished (Vogelsang and Larsen, “The Concentration Camps, 1933-45”). Because of

the conditions, these camps claimed the lives of somewhere between 795,889 and

955,215 men (USHMM, “Concentration Camp System: In Depth”).

“The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”

As stated by Yad Vashem’s website, around the beginning of “Final Solution of

the Jewish Question” (the Nazis plan to kill all the Jews), the Nazis invaded the Soviet

Union in June of 1941. The first mass killings of Jews and communists were carried out

by Einsatzgruppen units. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four mobile killing squads- A,

B, C, D (Yad Vashem, “The Beginning of The Final Solution”).

The first of these despicable mass

murders was conducted by squad C in September

of 1941 at Babi-Yar which is located near Kiev,

Ukraine. The squad spent two days killing 33,771

Jews. Up to this point woman and children were

killed in the crossfire, but they were now targets

A mass grave
of extermination (Yad Vashem, “The Beginning
http://bit.ly/hfkhkc
of The Final Solution”).

They continued these killings until late 1941 when the Germans realized they

were not winning the war with the Soviets. As a result, the killings stopped so the Jews

could work making roads, military equipment and other things to help the war continue.

Early in the following year, the killings resumed (Yad Vashem, The Beginning of The

Final Solution”).
 Blanchfield 8

The Wannsee Conference. After a short time, the Wannsee conference was held

with the Nazi elites in January of 1942. The

purpose of the conference was to determine how

to kill the Jews in a more effective and

impersonal manner. The mass shootings were

having adverse psychological effects on the Nazi

troops. The Nazis had already been

The house where the conference took place
http://bit.ly/gr038T
experimenting with new and more effective

ways to kill people. The leaders concurred the most effective way to fast and impersonal

killing was to use gas chambers (The Holocaust History Project).

Following the conference they built death camps to carry out the gassing. Now

that the Nazis had the answer to their problem, they quickly started to transport all Jews

to these death camps for mass extermination (Vogelsang and Larsen, “Extermination

Camps”).

The Extermination methods of the Germans

Many execution methods were tried until 1942 when they held the Wannsee

Conference. The first were mass shootings in which the Nazis had the Jews dig massive

holes. The executioners made the victims line up at the edge of the pit and they were

murdered by a firing squad. After everyone dropped it to the pit, the slaughterers had the

next group line up for assignation and this continued for some time (Yad Vashem, “The

Beginning of The Final Solution”).

The mass shootings of woman and children had a major psychological impact on

the Nazis, so they looked for a new way to kill. The second method was the use of box
 Blanchfield 9

trucks. The trucks were sealed and fitted with a pipe that directed all of the trucks exhaust

into the back were the victims were crowded. This was effective in not having the victims

being watched while being killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Gassing

Operations”).

The gassing trucks proved to be too slow for large scale extermination and a more

efficient way was developed. The Germans started to use chambers were they would

pump in ether carbon monoxide or Zyklon-B gas into a large room filled with many men,

woman and children. This proved to be the most effective way of mass execution (United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Gassing Operations”).

Death camps. These were built and used to the fullest extent after the “Final

Solution” was decided upon. There were six death camps including Chelmno, Treblinka,

Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec and Auschwitz.

Most of the camps used carbon monoxide

except Auschwitz and Majdanek which used

Zyklon-B gas (Vogelsang and Larsen,

“Extermination Camps”).

There were three Auschwitz camps in

Inside the main gas chamber at Auschwitz
http://bit.ly/eMv9Xl
close proximity. Auschwitz-Birkenau also known

as Auschwitz II was the largest gassing facility of

all. Prisoners arrived in cattle cars to the camp. There was a selection process were the SS

would take a small number of people and send them to forced labor and the rest were

quickly moved into the gas chambers. The Nazis made the gas chambers to resemble

showers to trick the victims into entering. After the victims were gassed they were
 Blanchfield 10

moved into a crematorium and burned. (United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

“Auschwitz”).At times the crematories could not

handle the amount of people and they were

thrown into piles and burned in the open

(Vogelsang and Larsen, “Extermination Camps”).

Auschwitz II in its most efficient time was killing around 6,000 people a day. It
One of the crematoriums at Auschwitz
claimed the lives of around 1,085,000 people from http://bit.ly/e4Bkbd

October 1941 to November 1944, when the SS

dismantled the gas chambers (USHMM, “Auschwitz”). The total number of people killed

between all six of the death camps was over 3,000,000 (Vogelsang and Larsen,

“Extermination Camps”).

The liberation of the camps

When the Holocaust was coming to an end because the Nazis were losing the war,

the SS started to force the prisoners on “Death Marches” from the camps in Poland

toward the interior portion of Germany. Thousands of men died on these marches

because of starvation, exhaustion or execution (USHMM, “Death Marches”). Around

200,000 to 250,000 prisoners died on these marches (Yad Vashem, “The Final Stages of

the War and the Aftermath”).

In 1945, U.S., Soviet and British

forces swept across Europe and liberated the

camps and ghettos. When they came across

these “Death Marches” they were disbanded.

Piles of corpses after camp liberation

http://bit.ly/i0guQi
 Blanchfield 11

When the forces entered the camps they found massive amounts of dead bodies and

human remains. In addition, they found starving and diseased prisoners (USHMM,

“Liberation of Nazi Camps”).

After liberation. The Jews returning to Germany were not welcomed back home

after the liberation. They were met with hostility and anti-Semitic gangs quickly formed.

These gangs murdered close to 1,500 Jews within the first month (Yad Vashem, “The

Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath”).

Some Jews headed toward Poland after encountering such hostility in an effort to

live peacefully. “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee” provided support

for the displaced Jews by providing food, medical care and other necessities (Yad

Vashem, “The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath”).

Other Jews left toward Palestine. Around 70,000 arrived in Palestine, but over

50,000 were arrested and were again put into camps due to a British mandate limiting

immigrants. The Joint Distribution Committee helped the Jews with their connection to

Palestine (Yad Vashem, “The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath”).

“On November 27, 1947, the United Nations resolved to terminate the British

Mandate for Palestine and to divide the country

into two states: one Jewish and one Arab.” On

the next day a war began and the Jews gained

their independence (Yad Vashem, “The Final

Stages of the War and the Aftermath”).

The Israel flag The State of Israel was formed in May 1948 and
http://bit.ly/gdc8V3

the Jewish people finely had a place to establish

 Blanchfield 12

their home (USHMM, “The Aftermath of the Holocaust”). The Jews who once had to

wear the Star of David for shame now display it on their flag with pride.

Works Cited
 Blanchfield 13

Gavin, Philip. The History Place. N.p., 4 July 1996. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

---.“The Night of Broken Glass.”

---.“The Nuremberg Laws.”

The Holocaust History Project. “ The Wannsee Conference”. N.p., 1998. Web. 24 Feb.

2011.

Jones, Adam. “Case Study: The Jewish Holocaust, 1933-45.” Gendercide Watch . N.p.,

1999. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2011.

---. “The Aftermath of the Holocaust.”

---. “Auschwitz.”

---. “Concentration Camp System: In Depth.”

---. “Gassing Operations.”

---. “Germany: Establishment of the Nazi Dictatorship.”

---. “Ghettos.”

---. “Liberation of Nazi Camps.”

Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B. Larsen. The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide

Studies. N.p., 2002. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.

---. “The Concentration Camps, 1933-45.”

---. “Extermination Camps.”

Yad Vashem- The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. International

Institute for Holocaust Research, 2011. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

 Blanchfield 14

---. “1938.”

---. “Antisemitism.”

---. The Beginning of The Final Solution.”

---. “Conquest of Poland and Attacks on Jews.”

---. “Death Marches.”

---. “Expansion of German Conquest and Policy Towards Jews.”

---. “The Final Stages of the War and the Aftermath.”

---. “Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution.”

---. “Warsaw.”