The Holocaust

Some Basic Facts …

• Millions of Jews suffered untold cruelty and unimaginable horrors at the hands of those with unfettered and deeply evil power.

• The Holocaust, which was the plan of the Nazi party for their “Final Solution” to exterminate the Jews, was rooted in one man’s hate-filled ideology: Adolph Hitler.

• Adolph Hitler, the Führer of Germany from 1934 to 1945, lead the mass slaughter of innocent human beings in his genocidal cleansing campaign to rid the world of our Jews.

• One and a half million Jewish children were murdered, and approximately 2/3 of Europe’s Jews were exterminated.

Persecution

• Boycott of all Jewish businesses.• The Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their

citizenship and prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans.

• Jews were prohibited from public places, like parks, fired from civil service jobs, had to register their property, and Jewish doctors could only take care of Jewish patients.

• Synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed.• Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.

Wearing the Jewish Star

Ghettos

• Nazis ordered all Jews to live in specific ghettos.

• Nazis loaded up to 1,000 Jews per day in trains to Concentration camps.

Pogroms • Located in the U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Museum, this is a collection of photos from a Jewish town in which every single inhabitant was murdered. These pictures are all that is left.

The Iasi Death Train,Romania, 1941.

Concentration and Extermination Camps

• Hard physical labor, little food, and torture.• Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments

on prisoners against their will.• Group exterminations in gas chambers

• Although the term "concentration camps" is often used to describe all Nazi camps, there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including transit camps, forced-labor camps, and death camps.

• In some of these camps there was at least a small chance to survive; while in others, there was no chance at all.

Entrance gate to Auschwitz

The Starvation and Torture

The Children

70% of the Jews in Holland perished in the Holocaust.This 70% figure represents the highest loss in any countryoccupied by the

Germans in western Europe.

The bodies murdered and dumped without dignity.

The liberation by our American soldiers

Elie Wiesel• Elie Wiesel is a Romanian-

born Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor.

• He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1RoMYvuapII

Oskar Schindler• Oskar Schindler was an ethnic

German industrialist. He is credited with saving more 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamel and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is not Poland and the Czech Republic respectively. He is the subject of the novel and film Schindler’s List.

Corrie Ten Boom• Corrie Ten Boom and her

family were responsible for the rescue of many Jews from the Holocaust. As a result, her family fell victim to the Nazi regime as well and was sent to a concentration camp, where many died. Still, her faith in Christ remained strong. She wrote the book The Hiding Place about her experience.

The shoes left behind

We are the Shoes

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathersFrom Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, And because we are only made of fabric and leatherAnd not of blood and flesh, Each one of us avoided the hellfire–

Moshe Szulsztein, Yiddish Poet

Eyeglasses

Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem

Outside the Legion of Honor - Lincoln Park

The Aftermath• Approximately 11 million died – 6 million Jews and 5 million others,

including Gypsies, the Disabled, Homosexuals, and Political Dissidents.• 350,000 - that is the number of Holocaust survivors. • After camps were liberated, many children were alone, without a single

family member to look to for help. • Many survivors tried to return to their home countries, but they were

often unwelcome, and sometimes even shot. • Bystanders felt extremely guilty for allowing all these events to take place

and didn’t want to be reminded of their role in the Holocaust. • After the Holocaust, survivors suffered because they lost loved ones, had

to care for themselves, and were haunted by their memories.