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Adolf Hitler.
This was the man in charge and fully responsible for Jews that were killed in probably the most torturious and terrible ways known to man. How did he get away with it for so long? Well not only did he have the Nazi's and other German's to help, but he had the Hungarian Police, and even JEWS! The ones that didn't mind going behind their families backs pretty much just so that their life would be saved. He and his accomplices killed over 6 MILLION Jewish people. Including Gypsies and other people. -
attempts to eliminate any competing authority.
the Nazi regime arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic central party, as well as Catholic priests. They disbanded schools and Catholic institutions as part of the totalitarian policy of the regime. -
Period: to
The Holocaust
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first organized attacks on German opponents.
On March 9, 1933, several weeks after Hitler assumed power, the first organized attacks on German opponents of the regime and on Jews broke out across Germany. -
Sinti and Roma. (gypsies)
Of the 44,000 Sinti and Roma who lived in the Reich, thousands were sent to concentration camps after the war began. Others were concentrated in transit camps before being sent to ghettos and extermination camps during the war. Between 90,000-150,000 Sinti and Roma were murdered by the Germans throughout Europe. -
the “Nuremberg Laws” were passed.
This law stripped the Jews of their citizenship and forbid intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were banned from universities; Jewish actors were dismissed from theaters; Jewish authors’ works were rejected by publishers; and Jewish journalists were hard-pressed to find newspapers that would publish their writings. -
No Travel.
Jews contained in Germany by act making Jewish passports invalid for international travel. -
Annexation (Austria)
German annexation of Austria. German anti-Jewish laws take effect in the subjugated country. -
during the “Euthanasia” program
Between 200,000-350,000 mentally and physically disabled individuals were forcibly sterilized until 1939. Beginning in 1939, approximately 200,000 were murdered either by gassing, lethal injection or starvation. -
Russia and Germany sign a non-aggression pact.
Hitler was planning against the possibility of a two front war. Since fighting a two front war in World War I had split Germany's forces.
German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop contacted the Soviets to arrange a deal. Ribbentrop met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow and together they arranged two pacts
*The economic agreement and
*The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. -
a new phase in German policy toward the Jews.
The beginning of World War II, after the conquest of Poland, the Jews of Eastern Europe were concentrated in ghettos, while in Western Europe the Jews were registered and dispossessed of their property. -
Jews were forced inside the area of the ghetto.
Surrounded by walls that they built with their own hands and under strict and violent guard, the Jews of Warsaw were cut off from the outside world. Within the ghetto their lives oscillated in the desperate struggle between survival and death from disease or starvation. -
Germans began the mass deportations.
on the eve of the Ninth of Av in the Jewish calendar, the Germans began the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto. By the time they ended on September 21, Yom Kippur, some 260,000 inhabitants of the ghetto had been deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. -
The World's Reaction.
US President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill gave the Germans a public warning about the responsibility that would be laid at their feet for the murder of the Jews of Europe. However, the political concept that became dominant among the politicians and generals was that winning the war came first; this would, by proxy, also stop the murder of the European Jews. -
Smuggling and assisting Jews to escape.
Some rescuers helped Jews to leave especially dangerous areas in order to escape to a less dangerous location. They smuggled Jews out of ghettos and prisons and helped them cross borders into unoccupied countries or into areas where the persecution was less intense, such as neutral Switzerland. -
The word "Holocaust."
*Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burned) The word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. -
Death Marches.
The marches served a twofold purpose: 1. to ensure that no witnesses would be left to testify to the murders 2. to exploit the Jewish labor force until the last possible moment at the destination of the marches in German and Austrian camps. It was really an obstacle to their own escape from the Red Army making them even more eager to kill their prisoners and get away. -
Nuremberg Trials
The tribunal discussed Nazi Germany’s antisemitic policy on different occasions. Over 800 documents and more than 30 witnesses referred to the persecution of the Jews. Among them Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever testified on Jewish suffering in the Vilna ghetto. In addition, SS officer Dieter Wisliceny and the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss testified on the origins of the Final Solution.
