1. THE HOLOCAUST BEGINS “Nature is cruel, so we may be cruel, too… I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.” – Adolf Hitler
27. “Stamps” drawn on the blank borders of a sheet of postage stamps by Karl Schwesig, a non-Jew interred in Gurs concentration camp in France. The words “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” were the motto of the French Revolution. The founding principle’s of the state. The stamps tell ironically what Schwesig believed had become of these noble ideas.
28. Italy Joins the Axis June 10, 1940 Benito Mussolini with Adolf Hitler. Mussolini was Prime Minister & Dictator of fascist Italy, 1922-1943. Italy enters World War II as a Germany ally hoping to establish a “New Roman Empire.” Although allied with Germany, Mussolini did not willingly cooperate in the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe.
46. Gentile Poles assembled for forced labor. June 1943 A German soldier stands on a toppled Polish monument. Krakow, Poland
47. Polish boys imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire fence. Approximately 40,000 Polish children were kidnapped and imprisoned in the camp before being transferred to Germany during "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), The children were used as slave laborers in Germany.
48. Isolation of Polish Jews 1. Humiliation & Terror 2. Forced Labor 3. Expulsion 4. The Jewish Badge
49. Humiliation & Terror German soldiers cutting the beard of a Jew. Jewish men forced to race against one another while riding on the backs of their fellows. Harassment of a Jewish man. A soldier tutors two Jewish men on how to give the Nazi salute correctly.
50. Forced Labor Jews rounded up for forced labor October, 1939 Jews forced to sweep the streets.
53. France Belgium Holland Germany, Alsace, Bohemia-Moravia Parts of Greece, Serbia, Belgrade, Sofia (armband) Part of Slovakia Romania Parts of Bulgaria (a button) Parts of Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia Parts of Poland, East & Upper Silesia
54. The Ghettos The horror is not in the executions. It is in the life that came before the executions. - Abba Kovner, partisan fighter from the Vilna Ghetto Definition: section of a city in which a minority group lives and/or is restricted to by economics or discrimination First ghetto = Venice, 1516 when the Church ordered walls built around the Jewish Quarter. “Ghetto” means “foundry” or “iron works.” Venice ghetto was near a foundry that produced cannon balls. The establishment of ghettos was the first step in the Nazi extermination plan for the Jews of Eastern Europe. They served as assembly and collection points for Jews.
55.
56. By 1942, most of the Jews of Eastern Europe were concentrated in more than 800 ghettos.
57.
58.
59.
60. Every community with more than 10,000 people had to choose 24 members. The Judenrat members in Krakow, Poland.
61. The Judenrat had the following functions: Transmit German directives to Jewish population Use Jewish police to enforce German will Establish hospitals, kitchens, schools, recreation facilities, and orphanages based on available resources Oversee taxes, banking, grievances, labor, public health, social welfare, postal service, housing and religious services Deliver Jewish property, labor, and lives to Germans Judenrat leaders rationalized cooperation, claiming it saved some Jewish lives. Jewish community members often viewed their Judenrat as betrayers.
62.
63. Jews at forced labor constructing the wall around the Krakow ghetto. 1941 Polish and Jewish laborers construct a section of the wall that separated the Warsaw ghetto from the rest of the city.
64.
65. Non-Jewish residents evicted before Jews forced to move in. In Warsaw, 113,000 Poles had to leave and 138,000 Jews moved in.
66.
67. Jew chopping up furniture to use as fuel. Lodz Ghetto. The ghetto orchestra, Lodz. Girls eating in soup kitchen, Warsaw.
68. Jews using a wooden bridge to cross from one section of the Lodz Ghetto to the other. Communal kitchen for children, Warsaw Ghetto. Burials, a part of daily life. Street scene, Warsaw Ghetto.
69. Jewish Life Jewish women baking matzos for Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto. Celebrating the Passover Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto. Reading the Torah. Celebrating the beginning of the Sabbath in the Lodz Ghetto. Jewish men praying in the Krakow Ghetto.
70. Living Conditions With little food and diseases rampant in the crowded ghettos, the living conditions became unbearable.
76. Forced Labor Jewish women press Nazi military uniforms in the Glubokoye Ghetto. Jewish women moving human excrement, Lodz, Poland. Jewish children making boxes in the Glubokoye Ghetto. A workshop in the Warsaw Ghetto. Child in a ghetto factory, Kovno, Lithuania. Making shoes. Kovno, Lithuania.
77.
78.
79. News of mass shootings and gassings met with disbelief by JewsDeportation of the elderly and sick from the Lodz Ghetto to Chelmno. Passengers in a train car. Lodz, Poland
80.
81. Deportations in and out of the Lodz Ghetto. Jews from Lublin ghetto being hustled to the trains to be sent to Sobibor death camp. Deportation of Children from the Lodz Ghetto. Round-ups in the Warsaw Ghetto.
82. A woman writing a letter before boarding a deportation train. Lodz, Poland Jews parting from their relatives before their deportation. Lodz, Poland Final farewell: A child about to be sent to death camp.
113. Nazis executing a Jew at the edge of a mass grave. Ukraine, January 1942
114. Bialystok MassacreJune 27, 1941 The Great Synagogue of Bialystock, built in 1908, was the largest wooden synagogue in Eastern Europe. On June 27, 1941 the Germans forced 1,000 Jews into the synagogue and burned it to the ground.
