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The Holocaust happened during WWII.

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Unit Essential Question: What does learning about the choices people made during the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the Holocaust teach us about the power and impact of our choices today?

What was the Holocaust? Why is it important to confront the brutality of this history?

What did it mean to resist the Nazis? What kinds of resistance were those targeted by the Nazis able to carry out?

What is the meaning of human dignity? How did the Nazis seek to deprive their victims of basic human dignity, and how did those targeted attempt to preserve or reclaim their dignity?

Students will be able to explain the range of Nazi methods of mass murder, including the establishment of Jewish ghettos, mobile killing units, concentration camps, and killing centers.

Students will bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, as well as extraordinary acts of resistance and efforts to preserve human dignity on the part of victims and survivors.

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the enormity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and to help them bear witness to the experiences of those targeted by the Nazis. In this lesson, students will continue this unit's historical case study by learning about four phases of the Holocaust and then looking closely at stories of a few individuals who were targeted by Nazi brutality. Students will also examine firsthand accounts of individuals who worked to preserve their human dignity in the face of dehumanization, and they will use those stories to help them think about the meaning and purpose of resistance during the Holocaust.

The next lesson focuses on the role of perpetrators and bystanders, as well as acts of resistance and courage by upstanders and rescuers during the Holocaust. The material in these two lessons reminds students of the importance of living in a democracy whose institutions safeguard civil and human rights and whose citizens are capable of making informed judgments, not only on behalf of themselves but on behalf of a larger community.

Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz begins her poem "For Yom Ha'Shoah" with these lines: "Come, take this giant leap with me / into the other world...the other place / where language fails and imagery deﬁes, / denies man's consciousness...and dies / upon the altar of insanity." To study the history in this lesson is to take Weitz's "giant leap." Learning about the Holocaust requires us to examine events in history and examples of human behavior that both unsettle us and elude our attempts to explain them.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, its goal was to claim "living space" for the "Aryan" race that the Nazis had long wanted. But in order for Germans to settle in the territory of eastern Europe they had conquered from the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942, they would have to empty it of so-called inferior races, including the millions of Jews who lived there. Early in the war, the Germans had forced Jews from the territories they conquered into ghettos and concentration camps and killed scores of them in mass shootings by mobile killing units. They had also considered plans to move the populations of Jews and other "non-Aryans" to far-off places like Madagascar or Siberia.

Eventually, however, the Nazi leadership decided that these plans would be too impractical or expensive; they chose instead a policy to annihilate all of the Jews of Europe. Historians believe this decision was made by Hitler and his advisors toward the end of 1941. As mobile killing units continued to operate throughout eastern Europe, the Nazis began to establish killing centers-camps designed for the purpose of murdering large numbers of victims, primarily in gas chambers, as quickly and efﬁciently as possible. By the end of the war in 1945, more than 6 million Jews and millions of other civilians-including Roma and Sinti, Slavs (Poles, Russians, and others), the disabled, and many of the Nazis' political enemies-were murdered by the Third Reich.

To gain an understanding of the Holocaust, it is important to look not only at the acts of perpetrators but also at the experiences of victims and survivors. Yet it is impossible to truly understand their experiences. Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains, "Ask any survivor and he will tell you, and his children will tell you. He or she who did not live through the event will never know it. And he or she who did live through the event will never reveal it. Not entirely. Not really. Between our memory and its reflection there stands a wall that cannot be pierced."

Still, even though it is impossible to truly understand the victims' experiences, and even though nothing can prepare us to encounter the horror of this crime, it is still important to take stock of the scope of this genocide-to appreciate how humanity was stripped from millions of people. This lesson helps students bear witness to the stories of some of the people who suffered under Nazi brutality.

This lesson also includes the stories of individuals who, in spite of the danger, violence, and suffering around them, resisted the Nazis' program of dehumanization and murder. Some individuals imprisoned in the concentration camps made enormous efforts to preserve human dignity for themselves and others. A small percentage of prisoners in camps and ghettos found ways to carry out armed resistance.

This lesson challenges students to expand their ideas about resistance to include forms of "spiritual resistance," or the struggle to maintain a sense of identity, dignity, faith, and culture in the degrading and dehumanizing systems of the ghettos and camps. While perhaps less perceptible, acts of spiritual resistance such as secretly providing education for children in concentration camps (A Basic Feeling of Human Dignity) or creating a secret archive representing the individual lives lost ( Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto) are equally powerful.

It is important to recognize the incredible challenges that confronted Jews trying to resist Nazi oppression and violence. For some victims it was impossible to believe what lay ahead. Even once Jews recognized the gravity of their situation, during the war it was difficult for anyone, and especially Jews, to gain the resources or arms to resist the Nazis. Resistance was not possible for many other Jews who were confronted with what scholar Lawrence Langer has labeled choiceless choices. For example, consider the circumstances of the Sonderkommandos -Jewish prisoners who were kept alive and forced to help German guards murder other prisoners. According to Langer, there are no moral equivalents in the "normal" world for these experiences, no way to understand or judge their actions. Answering the question, asked by some, of why more Jews did not resist, Elie Wiesel explains, "The question is not why all the Jews did not fight, but how so many of them did. Tormented, beaten, starved, where did they find the strength-spiritual and physical-to resist?"

The history and the stories that students encounter in this lesson are disturbing and difficult to fathom yet necessary to confront. They show the importance of honoring human dignity by showing us what can happen when it is taken away and what can be prevented when it is preserved.

1. Preparing to Teach Emotionally Challenging Content
In this lesson, students will encounter emotionally challenging content. Carefully consider each of these suggestions before engaging with this material with your students:

Teachers know their students best. Preview each resource in this lesson before you share it with your students. Let students know in advance when they are about to encounter material that some may find upsetting. If necessary, omit resources that you believe will be too disturbing for your students.

Briefly review the class contract with students before beginning the lesson. This will help reinforce the norms you have established and reinforce the idea of the classroom as a safe space for students to voice concerns, questions, or emotions that may arise.

Be prepared for a variety of responses from students. Students often react to the Holocaust with sadness, anger, or frustration, yet it is also the case that many students do not have an immediate public response to learning about the Holocaust. Many teachers have been surprised by some students' lack of emotion during a lesson on the Holocaust. Experience has taught us that it can take time before students are able and ready to make sense of this material. In the meantime, many students report that their journals provide a safe space where they can begin to process their emotions and ideas. Therefore, we recommend that students are invited to write in their journals at many points throughout this lesson.

2. Defining Terms

The resources in this lesson refer to ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers. It may be helpful to post simple definitions of each of these words in the room to help students understand and distinguish between them:

Ghetto: a specific area of a city or town in which Jews were forced to live (and often not permitted to leave). Ghettos were overcrowded and deprived of sufficient food and other basic supplies.

Concentration camp: a camp created to confine large numbers of prisoners (including political opponents and those deemed racially inferior) in harsh and unhealthy conditions.

Killing center: a camp designed for the purpose of murdering large numbers of victims, primarily in gas chambers, as quickly and efﬁciently as possible.

The reality of the Nazi ghetto and camp system is quite complex, as the Nazis operated more than 40,000 ghettos and camps that served a variety of purposes and varied in size and operation. But for this lesson, these three definitions will suffice.

3. Previewing Vocabulary
In addition toghetto, concentration camp, and killing center, the following are key vocabulary terms used in this lesson:
Add these words to your Word Wall, if you are using one for this unit, and provide necessary support to help students learn these words as you teach the lesson.

4. Setting Up a Gallery Walk and Graffiti Board
The first day's activities in this lesson include a gallery walk and a graffiti board. Prepare in advance by placing the gallery walk resources around the room and setting up a whiteboard or large paper to use as a graffiti wall. We recommend leaving up the graffiti wall for a few days, so make sure it does not occupy space you anticipate needing.

Graffiti boards can offer the richest opportunity for reflection and written discussion when students can revisit them over time to observe new contributions from classmates. You might help to make this a more rewarding activity, and save some class time in the process, if you are able to find time outside of the normal class period (such as homeroom or study hall time) when students are able to visit your room and work on the graffiti wall.

Day 1

1. Prepare Students to Confront the Holocaust

Project the poem "For Yom Ha'Shoah," from the reading Take This Giant Leap, by Sonia Weitz, a Holocaust survivor. We suggest having students read the poem aloud at least two times. After reading, ask students to respond to the following questions in their journals:

What does this poem mean to you?

What does this poem suggest it is like to learn about the Holocaust?

What questions does the poem raise for you?

Then ask students to share their responses to these prompts. Their questions about the poem can be recorded on the board so that they can be revisited at the end of the lesson, when students have greater familiarity with the Holocaust.

2. Understand the Steps Leading to Mass Murder

While the primary goal of this lesson is to provide students with the opportunity bear witness to some specific stories and experiences of individuals who lived or died during the Holocaust, it is first necessary to briefly give students a framework to understand what happened.

In the video Step by Step: Phases of the Holocaust (06:47), historian Doris Bergen divides the history of the Holocaust into four phases, described on the handout Phases of the Holocaust. Pass out the handout and give students a few moments to read through the information. Then show the video so that students can hear Bergen's description of the four phases.

3. Reflect on a Range of Primary Sources

In this activity, students will have the opportunity to work independently to reflect on and bear witness to a variety of stories and experiences during the Holocaust.

First, students will watch a short video with testimony from a Holocaust survivor from the city of Vilna, Lithuania. The Jews of Vilna were forced into ghettos after the German invasion in 1941, and tens of thousands of them were then murdered either in mass shootings or at the Sobibór killing center. Show the class the video The Nazis in Vilna (05:06). After the clip is over, give students a few minutes to write in their journals in response to the following questions:

What about Jack Arnel's testimony is most striking to you? What does it make you think about or feel?

What is the value of hearing this kind of firsthand account? How does it change how you understand the Holocaust?

Tell students that in order to bear witness to the many ways that people experienced and responded to the brutality of the Holocaust, they will be looking at images from the period and reading the words of people who were there. They will also view two maps to get a sense of the scope of the Nazi atrocities.

Set up a gallery walk by placing the following resources on tables or hanging them around the room:

Ask students to silently "tour" the gallery. Give them eight minutes (or longer if you have more time) to view or read as many of the resources as they can. For each one they view, ask them to do the following in their journals:

Record the name of the resource.

If it is a text-based resource: Record a sentence, phrase, or detail you think is striking or significant.

If it is an image: Describe a part of the image that provokes a question, observation, or emotional response from you.

When students are finished, rather than return to their desks, ask them to visit the graffiti board you have set up in advance and write a response to the resources they encountered. They might add one or more of the notes they took during the gallery walk to the graffiti board, or they might write a new thought, observation, or feeling they are experiencing after viewing the resources.

Give students five minutes to finish their silent writing, but leave the graffiti board up in the classroom for the next day or longer so that students have additional time to reflect on the activity, view their peers' responses, and add new comments.

Day 2

1. Acknowledge Graffiti Board Responses
Begin class by encouraging students to continue interacting with the graffiti board. You might read aloud a few responses from the board so that students can hear each other's thoughts. If you have the time, you might also give students a few minutes to go up to the graffiti board, read comments from yesterday (especially if other classes added to the same graffiti board since you last met), and add new thoughts and observations.

2. Explore Resistance

Explain to students that it is crucial in a study of the Holocaust to acknowledge the various ways that Jews and others targeted by the Nazis resisted.

Students will often associate the idea of resistance with violent or armed rebellion. It is important to acknowledge that such actions did occur, such as the efforts of Jewish partisan groups, the sabotage of the crematoria by Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz, or the Warsaw ghetto uprising (see the extension Explore Additional Examples of Jewish Resistance below). Tell students that scholar Michael Berenbaum writes that for those who resisted violently, "Death was a given." Ask students to consider the question: If death was a given, why might Jews resist anyway?

Then explain to students that there are other types of resistance for them to consider. Pass out the reading A Basic Feeling of Human Dignity and read it aloud with the class.

After reading, ask students to respond in their journals to the following questions:

What is dignity? What do you think Lévy-Hass means by the phrase "a basic feeling of human dignity"? How did the Germans try to deprive Lévy-Hass and her fellow prisoners of this feeling?

How did Lévy-Hass attempt to restore dignity for some of those imprisoned in her camp? Were her efforts an act of resistance?

Lead a class discussion in response to these questions, using the Think, Pair, Share strategy. Then introduce students to the idea of spiritual resistance by providing them with the following definition:
Spiritual resistance: the struggle to maintain a sense of identity, dignity, faith, and culture in the degrading and dehumanizing systems of the ghettos and camps.

3. Create a Found Poem with the Words of a Survivor

Students will finish this lesson by returning to the words of Hannah Lévy-Hass to create a found poem.

Read aloud A Basic Feeling of Human Dignity once more. This time, as students read along, they will highlight or copy down words and phrases from the diary entry that they find especially powerful. Their goal is to eventually narrow down their list of words and phrases to 15 or 20.

Then pass out the handout Creating a Found Poem and go over the instructions with students. Students might want to copy the words and phrases they selected onto notecards or separate scraps of paper so that they can easily rearrange them. Tell students to try to arrange the words in a way that captures the essence of Lévy-Hass's testimony, as well as their experience of hearing it.

When students are satisfied with their poems, tell them to add titles. Ask them to turn in their poems or complete them for homework. At the beginning of the next class period, you might ask a few students to share their poems aloud with the class.

4. Exit Cards
End this lesson by having students complete anexit card to give you a sense of how they are responding to this emotionally challenging content. Have students read the poem "For Yom Ha'Shoah" again, and then ask them to write on their cards about what this poem means to them after learning more about the Holocaust.

This lesson prioritizes emotional engagement over ethical reflection and intellectual rigor. While it is important for students to know what happened during the Holocaust, it is crucial that they have the opportunity to confront the brutality of this history and to process individually and together the emotions and questions this history evokes. Therefore, it is most important for you to look at student contributions to the graffiti wall, their found poems, and their exit cards for evidence of how they are processing what they have encountered in this lesson. If necessary, follow up with individual students to offer support, or set aside additional class time for students to talk through and articulate their thoughts and feelings about this challenging history.

1. Bring Survivor Testimony into the Classroom
Many Facing History teachers arrange to have a Holocaust survivor visit their classroom to tell their story. Hearing a survivor's story in person is an extraordinary experience that often changes the way students feel about history and themselves. Because the Holocaust occurred more than seven decades ago, however, the number of survivors alive and available to speak to students is shrinking. In some cases, children of survivors are also visiting classrooms and sharing their families' powerful stories with students.Contact us to learn more.

If you are unable to schedule an in-person visit with a survivor, Facing History has produced acollection of films of survivor testimony. The videos are divided into three sections: "The Nazis in Power: Voices from Europe," "The Holocaust," and "After the Holocaust." Consult the lesson Using Testimony to Teach for suggestions and strategies for viewing testimony and facilitating purposeful reflection with students.

2. Explore the Concept of a "Choiceless Choice"
Throughout this unit, we have focused on examining the choices people made throughout the history of Nazi Germany as a way of reflecting more deeply on the choices we make in our own lives. However, there are some choices and some situations in this history for which analysis and judgment of individuals' actions is not appropriate or useful. Scholar Lawrence Langer labels the circumstances many victims were confronted with aschoiceless choices. These are situations in which no meaningful choices are available. For instance, Langer argues that the circumstances of Sonderkommandos-Jewish prisoners who were kept alive and forced to help German guards murder other prisoners-are unimaginable to us, and "surviving in extremity meant an existence that had no relation to our system of time and space." Therefore, it is not possible to judge their actions according the standards we might use to judge people's actions under more normal circumstances.

The concept ofchoiceless choices is abstract and difficult for younger students to grasp. But if you teach older students, consider sharing the reading Choiceless Choices with them. You can use the connection questions that follow the reading to begin a discussion, and you might ask students how Langer's concept connects to the "giant leap" Sonia Weitz describes in her poem "For Yom Ha'Shoah."

3. Explore Additional Examples of Jewish Resistance
Chapters 8 and 9 ofHolocaust and Human Behavior include a variety of additional resources about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Among these are examples of both spiritual (reading Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto) and armed resistance (reading The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) in the Warsaw ghetto. Facing History also offers the unit Resistance during the Holocaust: An Exploration of the Jewish Partisans. All of these resources can help deepen students' understanding of resistance by those who were targeted by the Nazis.

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Unit Essential Question: What does learning about the choices people made during the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the Holocaust teach us about the power and impact of our choices today? What was the Holocaust? Why is it important to confront the brutality of this history?

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In March 1933 the first ever concentration camp was opened
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camps

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Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.

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The Nazis came to power because they believes that the the Germans were more superior than othershttps://www.commonlit.org/texts/introduction-to-the-holocaust

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The Holocaust was the systematic,[1] bureaucratic,[2] state-sponsored persecution[3] and murder of six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior"[4] and that the Jews, deemed "inferior,"[5] were an alien[6] threat to the so-called German racial community.

During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological,[7] and behavioral grounds, among them Communists,[8] Socialists,[9] Jehovah's Witnesses,[10] and homosexuals.[11]

What was the Holocaust?

In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans[12] and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Q1

Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia[13] Program.

As Nazi tyranny[14] spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia[15] for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable[16] conditions.

From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists)[17] and religious dissidents[18] (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration[19] and maltreatment.[20] Q2

Administration of the "Final Solution"

In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS[21] and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps.

To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate[22] later deportation[23] of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos,[24] transit camps, and forced-labor camps in order to keep Jews grouped closely together during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich[25] and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.[26]

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others.

Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis[27] allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities. Q3

The End of the Holocaust

In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called "death marches," in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation[28] of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.[29]

For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8, while Soviet forces announced their "Victory Day" on May 9, 1945.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated[30] to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957.

The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely. Q4

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CommonLit | Introduction to the Holocaust

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The Holocaust was the systematic,[1] bureaucratic,[2] state-sponsored persecution[3] and murder of six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior"[4] and that the Jews, deemed "inferior,"[5] were an alien[6] threat to the so-called German racial community.

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The Holocaust targeted Jews to get rid of them.

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This online resource introduces students to the Holocaust through IWM London's Holocaust Exhibition. Explore the stories and collection items from the Holocaust Exhibition in your classroom or at home by clicking here. This resource has been specially created for schools, providing a digital version of IWM London's Holocaust learning session to support students and teachers to learn about the Holocaust while they are unable to visit IWM's branches.

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Nazi officials established over 44,000 incarceration sites during the time of the Third Reich. This estimate is based on continuing research of contemporary sources, including the perpetrators’ own records.

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Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.

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The term death march was made by the prisoners from the camps. This was when they would march them to gas them.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/death-marches

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In the summer of 1944, a massive Soviet offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center. Soviet forces then overran the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be forcibly evacuated toward the interior of the Reich. Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the emptying of the Majdanek camp. This had allowed Soviet and western media to widely publicized SS atrocities at the camp, using both footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving prisoners.

The evacuations of the concentration camps had three purposes:

1. SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to Allied and Soviet liberators

2. the SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments wherever possible

3. some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime.

In the summer and early autumn months of 1944, most of the evacuations were carried out by train or, in the case of German positions cut off in the Baltic States, by ship. As winter approached, however, and the Allies reached the German borders and assumed full control of German skies, SS authorities increasingly evacuated concentration camp prisoners from both east and west on foot.
Death Marches: Maps
By January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. Most of German East Prussia was already under Soviet occupation. Soviet forces besieged Warsaw, Poland, and Budapest, Hungary, as they prepared to push German forces back toward the interior of the Reich. After the failure of the surprise German Ardennes offensive in December 1944, Anglo-American forces in the west were ready to invade Germany.

The SS guards had strict orders to kill prisoners who could no longer walk or travel. As evacuations depended increasingly on forced marches and travel by open rail car or small craft in the Baltic Sea in the brutal winter of 1944-1945, the number who died of exhaustion and exposure along the routes increased dramatically. This encouraged an understandable perception among the prisoners that the Germans intended them all to die on the march. The term death march was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners.
Death Marches: Photographs
During these death marches, the SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following their explicit orders, they shot hundreds of prisoners who collapsed or could not keep pace on the march, or who could no longer disembark from the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced marches were especially common in late 1944 and 1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to camps deeper within Germany. Major evacuation operations moved prisoners out of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Gross-Rosen westward to Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in winter 1944-1945; from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg to Dachau and Mauthausen in spring 1945; and from Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme northwards to the Baltic Sea in the last weeks of the war.
Death Marches: Oral History Excerpts
As Allied forces advanced into the heart of Germany they liberated hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. This included thousands of prisoners whom Allied and Soviet troops liberated while they marched on the forced evacuations. On April 25, 1945, Soviet forces met US forces at Torgau, on the Elbe River in central Germany. The German armed forces surrendered unconditionally in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945. May 8, 1945, was proclaimed Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).

To almost the last day of the war, German authorities marched prisoners to various locations in the Reich. As late as May 1, 1945, prisoners who had been evacuated from Neuengamme to the North Sea coastline were loaded onto ships; hundreds of them died when the British bombed the ships a few days later, thinking that they carried German military personnel.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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In the summer of 1944, a massive Soviet offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center. Soviet forces then overran the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be forcibly evacuated toward the interior of the Reich.

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The Nazis would start separating he Jews and the polish people and start putting them in ghettos. The word "Ghetto" meaning an isolated area or "the slums"

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation. Many also perished in nearby slave labour camps, where conditions were even worse.

The Soviet-occupied zone of Poland fell into German hands following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Killing squads called Einsatzgruppen rounded up and shot Jewish men, women and children, as well as communist officials and others considered racially or ideologically dangerous. Surviving Jews were forced into ghettos.

In March 1942 the Nazis began deporting ghetto inhabitants as part of Operation 'Reinhard', the plan to systematically murder Jews in the part of German-occupied Poland not fully incorporated into the Reich, known as the General Government. From 1942 to 1944, the ghettos were liquidated and their Jewish inhabitants either shot or transported to extermination camps.

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation.

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The Holocaust killed Jews because of their beliefs.

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The Holocaust (1933-1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933-1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when 1 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as "the Shoah," the Hebrew word for "catastrophe."

When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out mass murder. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. Among other antisemitic measures, the Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organized violence targeting Germany's Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The "Final Solution" was the organized and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945.

Why did the Nazis target Jews?

The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview.

The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany's social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I (1914-1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), the fear of communism, and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.

However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, Middle Ages (500-1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly early modern Europe (1400-1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most other types of antisemitism

The Nazi Party promoted a particularly virulent form of racial antisemitism. It was central to the party's race-based worldview. The Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races and that some of these races were superior to others. They considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They asserted that "Aryans" were locked in a struggle for existence with other, inferior races. Further, the Nazis believed that the so-called "Jewish race" was the most inferior and dangerous of all. According to the Nazis, Jews were a threat that needed to be removed from German society. Otherwise, the Nazis insisted, the "Jewish race" would permanently corrupt and destroy the German people. The Nazis' race-based definition of Jews included many persons who identified as Christians or did not practice Judaism.

Where did the Holocaust take place?

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe's Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people.

The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate.

But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.

Nazi Germany's territorial expansion began in 1938-1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939-1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan.

By 1942-as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances-Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe.

The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.

Geography of the Holocaust

How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people?

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish.

Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:

Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws. These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws.

These included Various forms of public identification and exclusion. antisemitic propaganda, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, public humiliation, and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing).

The most notable example is There were also isolated incidents and other Organized violence. Kristallnacht.pogroms (violent riots).

Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.

in overcrowded Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews ghettos, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions.

Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews' property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust.

Jews had to perform Forced labor. forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses.

Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe's Jews. They referred to this plan as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

What was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"?

The Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (" Endlösung der Judenfrage ") was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was As part of the "Final Solution," mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans.

Mass Shootings

The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents.

Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.

at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.

The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included (special task forces of the SS and police), units. The provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the Einsatzgruppen Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS German military ( Wehrmacht ) SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.

As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces.

Killing Centers

In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called "extermination camps" or "death camps." Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans.

German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers "resettlement actions" or "evacuation transports." In English, they are often referred to as "deportations." Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system, as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars.

The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.

The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor.

My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother."
- Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family

At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims' belongings and remove victims' bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria.

Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers.

What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust?

Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder.

German officials first created ghettos in 1939-1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary.

The Purpose of the Ghettos

German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos.

Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling.

Life in the Ghettos

Life in the ghettos was miserable and dangerous. There was little food and limited sanitation or medical care. Hundreds of thousands of people died by starvation; rampant disease; exposure to extreme temperatures; as well as exhaustion from forced labor. Germans also murdered the imprisoned Jews through brutal beatings, torture, arbitrary shootings, and other forms of arbitrary violence.

Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. spiritual resistance.

Liquidating the Ghettos

Beginning in 1941-1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process "liquidation." It was part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes.

Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution?

Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution.

At the highest level, inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe's Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Adolf Hitler Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann.

However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals.

German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals

(the SD), the the Nazi leaders relied on many German institutions and organizations to help them carry out the Holocaust. Members of Nazi organizations initiated and carried out many anti-Jewish actions before and during World War II. These organizations Schutzstaffel , Protection Squadron). Once the war began, the SS and its police affiliates became especially deadly. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst Gestapo ,Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Order Police played particularly active and deadly roles in the mass murder of Europe's Jews. Other German institutions involved in carrying out the Final Solution included the German military; the German national railway and healthcare systems; the German civil service and criminal justice systems; and German businesses, insurance companies, and banks.

chose to implement the regime's policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans' participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors.

Non-German Governments and Institutions

Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, "allies" refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. "Collaborators" refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany's allies and collaborators included:

The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals.

These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. the Netherlands.

Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily).

The terms "allies" and "collaborators" can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

Individuals across Europe

Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust.

One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews' hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals' motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.

Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews' homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews' possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide.

Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders.

Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.

The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans.

People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies),

How did the Holocaust end?

so-called The Holocaust ended in May 1945 when the major Allied Powers (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives, they overran concentration camps. There they liberated the surviving prisoners, many of whom were Jews. The Allies also encountered and liberated the survivors of death marches. These forced marches consisted of groups of Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp inmates who had been evacuated on foot from camps under SS guard.

But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.

How did some Jews survive the Holocaust?

Despite Nazi Germany's efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck.

Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe

Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.

Survival in German-Controlled Europe

A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements. Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers.

Aftermath

While the Holocaust ended with the war, the legacy of terror and genocide did not. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others were dead. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators had devastated or completely destroyed thousands of Jewish communities across Europe.

In the those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of aftermath of the Holocaust, postwar violence and antisemitism. In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps. There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible. These important efforts remain ongoing.

Last Edited: Nov 5, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Introduction to the Holocaust: What was the Holocaust?

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Learn about the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

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By 1945, the Germans and their allies and collaborators had killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution."

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The Holocaust (1933-1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933-1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when 1 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as "the Shoah," the Hebrew word for "catastrophe."

When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out mass murder. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. Among other antisemitic measures, the Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organized violence targeting Germany's Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The "Final Solution" was the organized and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945.

Why did the Nazis target Jews?

The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview.

The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany's social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I (1914-1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), the fear of communism, and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.

However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, Middle Ages (500-1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly early modern Europe (1400-1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most other types of antisemitism

The Nazi Party promoted a particularly virulent form of racial antisemitism. It was central to the party's race-based worldview. The Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races and that some of these races were superior to others. They considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They asserted that "Aryans" were locked in a struggle for existence with other, inferior races. Further, the Nazis believed that the so-called "Jewish race" was the most inferior and dangerous of all. According to the Nazis, Jews were a threat that needed to be removed from German society. Otherwise, the Nazis insisted, the "Jewish race" would permanently corrupt and destroy the German people. The Nazis' race-based definition of Jews included many persons who identified as Christians or did not practice Judaism.

Where did the Holocaust take place?

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe's Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people.

The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate.

But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.

Nazi Germany's territorial expansion began in 1938-1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939-1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan.

By 1942-as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances-Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe.

The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.

Geography of the Holocaust

How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people?

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish.

Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:

Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws. These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws.

These included Various forms of public identification and exclusion. antisemitic propaganda, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, public humiliation, and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing).

The most notable example is There were also isolated incidents and other Organized violence. Kristallnacht.pogroms (violent riots).

Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.

in overcrowded Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews ghettos, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions.

Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews' property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust.

Jews had to perform Forced labor. forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses.

Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe's Jews. They referred to this plan as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

What was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"?

The Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (" Endlösung der Judenfrage ") was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was As part of the "Final Solution," mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans.

Mass Shootings

The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents.

Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.

at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.

The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included (special task forces of the SS and police), units. The provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the Einsatzgruppen Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS German military ( Wehrmacht ) SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.

As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces.

Killing Centers

In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called "extermination camps" or "death camps." Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans.

German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers "resettlement actions" or "evacuation transports." In English, they are often referred to as "deportations." Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system, as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars.

The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.

The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor.

My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother."
- Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family

At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims' belongings and remove victims' bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria.

Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers.

What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust?

Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder.

German officials first created ghettos in 1939-1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary.

The Purpose of the Ghettos

German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos.

Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling.

Life in the Ghettos

Life in the ghettos was miserable and dangerous. There was little food and limited sanitation or medical care. Hundreds of thousands of people died by starvation; rampant disease; exposure to extreme temperatures; as well as exhaustion from forced labor. Germans also murdered the imprisoned Jews through brutal beatings, torture, arbitrary shootings, and other forms of arbitrary violence.

Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. spiritual resistance.

Liquidating the Ghettos

Beginning in 1941-1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process "liquidation." It was part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes.

Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution?

Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution.

At the highest level, inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe's Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Adolf Hitler Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann.

However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals.

German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals

(the SD), the the Nazi leaders relied on many German institutions and organizations to help them carry out the Holocaust. Members of Nazi organizations initiated and carried out many anti-Jewish actions before and during World War II. These organizations Schutzstaffel , Protection Squadron). Once the war began, the SS and its police affiliates became especially deadly. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst Gestapo ,Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Order Police played particularly active and deadly roles in the mass murder of Europe's Jews. Other German institutions involved in carrying out the Final Solution included the German military; the German national railway and healthcare systems; the German civil service and criminal justice systems; and German businesses, insurance companies, and banks.

chose to implement the regime's policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans' participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors.

Non-German Governments and Institutions

Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, "allies" refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. "Collaborators" refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany's allies and collaborators included:

The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals.

These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. the Netherlands.

Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily).

The terms "allies" and "collaborators" can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

Individuals across Europe

Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust.

One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews' hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals' motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.

Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews' homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews' possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide.

Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders.

Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.

The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans.

People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies),

How did the Holocaust end?

so-called The Holocaust ended in May 1945 when the major Allied Powers (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives, they overran concentration camps. There they liberated the surviving prisoners, many of whom were Jews. The Allies also encountered and liberated the survivors of death marches. These forced marches consisted of groups of Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp inmates who had been evacuated on foot from camps under SS guard.

But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.

How did some Jews survive the Holocaust?

Despite Nazi Germany's efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck.

Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe

Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.

Survival in German-Controlled Europe

A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements. Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers.

Aftermath

While the Holocaust ended with the war, the legacy of terror and genocide did not. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others were dead. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators had devastated or completely destroyed thousands of Jewish communities across Europe.

In the those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of aftermath of the Holocaust, postwar violence and antisemitism. In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps. There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible. These important efforts remain ongoing.

Last Edited: Nov 5, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Introduction to the Holocaust: What was the Holocaust?

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Learn about the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

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By mid-1941, nearly all Jews in occupied Poland had been forced into these overcrowded districts. In the Warsaw ghetto, by far the largest, 490,000 Jews and a few hundred Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) struggled to survive despite extreme hardship.

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Anti-Semitism is the hatred against Jews.

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews.

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history's most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany. It is important to stand up to antisemitism in all of its forms today.

Teaching About Antisemitism

Confronting Antisemitism Today

#WeRemember #HolocaustRemembrance

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history's most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews

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During the Nazi era, German authorities also persecuted other groups because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority.

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Genocide is a national thing that is intended to destroy a certain nation or race.https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide

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Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

1. Killing members of the group

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing.

Origin of the Term Genocide

The word "genocide" did not exist prior to 1944. It is a very specific term coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews. He formed the word genocide by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing.

Genocide as an International Crime

On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved a written international agreement known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention established genocide as an international crime, which signatory nations "undertake to prevent and punish." Preventing genocide, the other major obligation of the convention, remains a challenge that nations, institutions, and individuals continue to face.

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What is Genocide? - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Genocide as a term did not exist before 1944. Learn about its origins and legal definition.

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Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the evacuation of Majdanek. Soviet and western media widely publicized SS atrocities at the camp, using both footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving prisoners.

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the nazis used concentration camps around Europe to take control.
https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/types-of-camps/concentration-camps/

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The Nazis used a variety of camps throughout their time in power to persecute, control and, eventually, murder their opponents.

This section will explain the different types of camps used at different points by the Nazis.

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The Nazis used a variety of camps throughout their time in power to persecute, control and, eventually, murder their opponents. This section will explain the different types of camps used at different points by the Nazis.

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Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party and they won the election. He became the chancellor of Germany.

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Hitler rose to power during a time of economic and political instability in Germany. Learn more about how and when Hitler came to power.

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The Nazi camps first started incarcerating "the enemies of that state," such as homosexuals, Social democrats, Roma, Jehovah witnesses, and German communists.

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Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.

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Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority.

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Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).

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The death marches started when the American and French armies were advancing towards western Germany. The Nazis moved the Jews to many different camps trying to keep them away from the Americans and the French.

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By the winter of 1944 to 1945, German defeat in World War II was all but certain. Soviet forces were approaching from the east, pushing through Poland toward Berlin, while American and British soldiers had liberated Paris and Brussels in late summer 1944 and were advancing toward the Rhine River in western Germany. Although Nazi leaders and the German population were increasingly aware that the war was lost, the disintegrating Reich continued to murder its victims, including hundreds of thousands of Jews.

As Allied soldiers approached Auschwitz and other concentration and labor camps in the early months of 1945, German authorities feverishly worked to cover up the evidence of their mass killings of Europe’s Jews by burning documents, buildings, and corpses. The Nazis moved thousands of prisoners, both Jews and non-Jews, from near the eastern battlefront to camps inside the Reich, away from the advancing enemy troops, where the healthier prisoners could continue to be used as slave labor for the German war effort.

1 The Germans called this process “forced evacuations.” To the victims, they became known as death marches. Forced into open rail cars or marched by foot through mud and snow, sick and exhausted prisoners were moved from camp to camp, exposed to the elements and the violent behavior of SS guards, and shot if they fell behind. One survivor recalled:

No food had touched my lips all the day before. Others “snatched” whatever they could—grass, snails, potatoes left in the fields—but my throat was blocked, although my stomach was growling with hunger. I had nothing else, so I ate snow. My whole body shook with cold. . . .

The march went on for days and nights and nobody knew where we were being taken. If they want to mow us down somewhere with machine guns, why don’t they do it immediately? Or, perhaps there are special installations for that? Perhaps they are taking us again to some new installations for killing by gas? But it seemed that there was no need for any of that; at least two-thirds of the prisoners were already lying lifeless by the roadside. In a few days all of us would suffer the same fate.
2

The prisoner evacuations were chaotic. Once they left a camp, the columns of prisoners were under the total control of the German guards, but the guards themselves were often disorganized and gave confusing directions to prisoners about where to go. Also, the guards brought with them little food or supplies for the sick, wounded, and starving men and women as they walked through towns and villages on their way back to labor camps in Germany. Historian Daniel Blatman writes, “This state of havoc generated the conditions that transformed the evacuations into gruesome death marches. The aimless wandering that often characterized the evacuation gradually took on an absurd and threatening aspect.”

3

Often, faced with the chaos of the end of the war and the approach of the Allied forces, SS guards simply murdered all of their prisoners. Local Germans, coming face to face with “enemies” they hated and feared at a time when their world was crumbling around them, joined in massacres of Jews and other prisoners being marched through their towns and villages.

4 In all, some 250,000 prisoners of the concentration camp system were killed on death marches.

One of those prisoners was Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti. Radnóti wrote poems during his imprisonment and evacuation from a forced labor camp in Yugoslavia. He was shot to death during a death march in November 1944 and buried in a mass grave. When the grave was exhumed months later, several poems were discovered in his clothing, including one now known as “Forced March.”

A fool he is who, collapsed,      rises and walks again,
Ankles and knees moving      alone, like wandering pain,
Yet he, as if wings uplifted him,       sets out on his way,
And in vain the ditch calls him      back, who dare not stay.
And if asked why not, he might answer      — without leaving his path —
That his wife was awaiting him,      and a saner, more beautiful death.
Poor fool! He's out of his mind:      now, for a long time,
Only scorched winds have whirled            over the houses at home,
The wall has been laid low,      the plum-tree is broken there,
The night of our native hearth      flutters, thick with fear.
Oh if only I could believe      that everything of worth
Were not just in my heart —       that I still had home on earth;
If only I had! As before,      jam made fresh from the plum
Would cool on the old verandah,      in peace the bee would hum
And an end-of summer stillness      would bask in the drowsy garden,
Naked among the leaves      would sway the fruit-trees' burden,
And Fanni would be waiting,      blonde, by russet hedgerow,
As the slow morning painted      slow shadow over shadow —
Could it perhaps still be?      The moon tonight's so round!
Don't leave me friend, shout at me:      I'll get up off the ground!
5

Citations

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Learn how the Germans tried to hide evidence of their mass murder toward the end of World War II by evacuating prisoners from camps.

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Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers along with German industrialists, lawyers and doctors, were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) committed suicide and was never brought to trial.

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The Holocaust was a time in World War 2 where over 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi army.

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This was held to bring the Nazi party to Justice. They were charged with their war crimes.

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The Road to the Nuremberg Trials

Shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany in 1933, he and his Nazi government began implementing policies designed to persecute German-Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state. Over the next decade, these policies grew increasingly repressive and violent and resulted, by the end of World War II (1939-45), in the systematic, state-sponsored murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with an estimated 4 million to 6 million non-Jews).

Did you know? The death sentences imposed in October 1946 were carried out by Master Sergeant John C. Woods (1903-50), who told a reporter from Time magazine that he was proud of his work. "The way I look at this hanging job, somebody has to do it . . . 10 men in 103 minutes. That's fast work."

In December 1942, the Allied leaders of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union "issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European Jewry and resolving to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilian populations," according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), the Soviet leader, initially proposed the execution of 50,000 to 100,000 German staff officers. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) discussed the possibility of summary execution (execution without a trial) of high-ranking Nazis, but was persuaded by American leaders that a criminal trial would be more effective. Among other advantages, criminal proceedings would require documentation of the crimes charged against the defendants and prevent later accusations that the defendants had been condemned without evidence.

There were many legal and procedural difficulties to overcome in setting up the Nuremberg trials. First, there was no precedent for an international trial of war criminals. There were earlier instances of prosecution for war crimes, such as the execution of Confederate army officer Henry Wirz (1823-65) for his maltreatment of Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War (1861-65); and the courts-martial held by Turkey in 1919-20 to punish those responsible for the Armenian genocide of 1915-16. However, these were trials conducted according to the laws of a single nation rather than, as in the case of the Nuremberg trials, a group of four powers (France, Britain, the Soviet Union and the U.S.) with different legal traditions and practices.

The Allies eventually established the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials with the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), issued on August 8, 1945. Among other things, the charter defined three categories of crimes: crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements), war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war) and crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds). It was determined that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes.

The city of Nuremberg (also known as Nurnberg) in the German state of Bavaria was selected as the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was relatively undamaged by the war and included a large prison area. Additionally, Nuremberg had been the site of annual Nazi propaganda rallies; holding the postwar trials there marked the symbolic end of Hitler's government, the Third Reich.

The Major War Criminals' Trial: 1945-46

The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946. The format of the trial was a mix of legal traditions: There were prosecutors and defense attorneys according to British and American law, but the decisions and sentences were imposed by a tribunal (panel of judges) rather than a single judge and a jury. The chief American prosecutor was Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied powers supplied two judges-a main judge and an alternate.

Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminal (such as the "Gestapo," or secret state police). One of the indicted men was deemed medically unfit to stand trial, while a second man killed himself before the trial began. Hitler and two of his top associates, Heinrich Himmler (1900-45) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-45), had each committed suicide in the spring of 1945 before they could be brought to trial. The defendants were allowed to choose their own lawyers, and the most common defense strategy was that the crimes defined in the London Charter were examples of ex post facto law; that is, they were laws that criminalized actions committed before the laws were drafted. Another defense was that the trial was a form of victor's justice-the Allies were applying a harsh standard to crimes committed by Germans and leniency to crimes committed by their own soldiers.

As the accused men and judges spoke four different languages, the trial saw the introduction of a technological innovation taken for granted today: instantaneous translation. IBM provided the technology and recruited men and women from international telephone exchanges to provide on-the-spot translations through headphones in English, French, German and Russian.

In the end, the international tribunal found all but three of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life behind bars. Ten of the condemned were executed by hanging on October 16, 1946. Hermann Göring (1893-1946), Hitler's designated successor and head of the "Luftwaffe" (German air force), committed suicide the night before his execution with a cyanide capsule he had hidden in a jar of skin medication.

Subsequent Trials: 1946-49

Following the Trial of Major War Criminals, there were 12 additional trials held at Nuremberg. These proceedings, lasting from December 1946 to April 1949, are grouped together as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. They differed from the first trial in that they were conducted before U.S. military tribunals rather than the international tribunal that decided the fate of the major Nazi leaders. The reason for the change was that growing differences among the four Allied powers had made other joint trials impossible. The subsequent trials were held in the same location at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.

These proceedings included the Doctors Trial (December 9, 1946-August 20, 1947), in which 23 defendants were accused of crimes against humanity, including medical experiments on prisoners of war. In the Judges Trial (March 5-December 4, 1947), 16 lawyers and judges were charged with furthering the Nazi plan for racial purity by implementing the eugenics laws of the Third Reich. Other subsequent trials dealt with German industrialists accused of using slave labor and plundering occupied countries; high-ranking army officers accused of atrocities against prisoners of war; and SS officers accused of violence against concentration-camp inmates. Of the 185 people indicted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, 12 defendants received death sentences, 8 others were given life in prison and an additional 77 people received prison terms of varying lengths, according to the USHMM. Authorities later reduced a number of the sentences.

Aftermath

The Nuremberg trials were controversial even among those who wanted the major criminals punished. Harlan Stone (1872-1946), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the time, described the proceedings as a "sanctimonious fraud" and a "high-grade lynching party." William O. Douglas (1898-1980), then an associate U.S. Supreme Court justice, said the Allies "substituted power for principle" at Nuremberg.

Nonetheless, most observers considered the trials a step forward for the establishment of international law. The findings at Nuremberg led directly to the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948) and Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), as well as the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War (1949). In addition, the International Military Tribunal supplied a useful precedent for the trials of Japanese war criminals in Tokyo (1946-48); the 1961 trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann (1906-62); and the establishment of tribunals for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia (1993) and in Rwanda (1994).

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Nuremberg Trials - Definition, Dates & Purpose

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The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949 to try those accused of Nazi war crimes. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers, etc., were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

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Hitler came to power by talking about how the people in world war 1 was richer than them. They listened to him and found out that he sounded like he was talking about the truth. So they listened to him and went to parties and the people who listened to him joined the nazis.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/Rise-to-power

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Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party's propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region's popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup d'état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government.

Munich was a gathering place for dissatisfied former servicemen and members of the Freikorps, which had been organized in 1918-19 from units of the German army that were unwilling to return to civilian life, and for political plotters against the republic. Many of these joined the Nazi Party. Foremost among them was Ernst Röhm, a staff member of the district army command, who had joined the German Workers' Party before Hitler and who was of great help in furthering Hitler's rise within the party. It was he who recruited the "strong arm" squads used by Hitler to protect party meetings, to attack socialists and communists, and to exploit violence for the impression of strength it gave. In 1921 these squads were formally organized under Röhm into a private party army, the SA (Sturmabteilung). Röhm was also able to secure protection from the Bavarian government, which depended on the local army command for the maintenance of order and which tacitly accepted some of his terrorist tactics.

Conditions were favourable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party. Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents relented. In July 1921 he became their leader with almost unlimited powers. From the first he set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its members in loyalty to him. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer," acquired in 1920), and through meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. With his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi leaders, men whose names today live in infamy-Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher.

The climax of this rapid growth of the Nazi Party in Bavaria came in an attempt to seize power in the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of November 1923, when Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff tried to take advantage of the prevailing confusion and opposition to the Weimar Republic to force the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander to proclaim a national revolution. In the melee that resulted, the police and the army fired at the advancing marchers, killing a few of them. Hitler was injured, and four policemen were killed. Placed on trial for treason, he characteristically took advantage of the immense publicity afforded to him. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch-that the movement must achieve power by legal means. He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months, and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. Hitler used the time to dictate the first volume of , his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his multitudinous ideas.

Hitler's ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an unchangeable natural order that exalted the " Aryan race" as the creative element of mankind. According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk ("the people"), of which the German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk-a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation of the Volk. Parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the Führer the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.

The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler's view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-Semitism became Hitler's deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote, "Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the "destroyer of culture," "a parasite within the nation," and "a menace."

During Hitler's absence in prison, the Nazi Party languished as the result of internal dissension. After his release, Hitler faced difficulties that had not existed before 1923. Economic stability had been achieved by a currency reform and the Dawes Plan had scaled back Germany's World War I reparations. The republic seemed to have become more respectable. Hitler was forbidden to make speeches, first in Bavaria, then in many other German states (these prohibitions remained in force until 1927-28). Nevertheless, the party grew slowly in numbers, and in 1926 Hitler successfully established his position within it against Gregor Strasser, whose followers were primarily in northern Germany.

The advent of the Depression in 1929, however, led to a new period of political instability. In 1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany's war reparation payments. With the help of Hugenberg's newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience. The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong right-wing, antisocialist government. The subsidies Hitler received from the industrialists placed his party on a secure financial footing and enabled him to make effective his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed, based on the proclamation of his faith that Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness. Hitler's dealings with Hugenberg and the industrialists exemplify his skill in using those who sought to use him. But his most important achievement was the establishment of a truly national party (with its voters and followers drawn from different classes and religious groups), unique in Germany at the time.

Unremitting propaganda, set against the failure of the government to improve conditions during the Depression, produced a steadily mounting electoral strength for the Nazis. The party became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg's son, Oskar. The fear of communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together. In spite of a decline in the Nazi Party's votes in November 1932, Hitler insisted that the chancellorship was the only office he would accept. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg offered him the chancellorship of Germany. His cabinet included few Nazis at that point.

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Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany

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Adolf Hitler - Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany: Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919).

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Not all facilities established were concentration camps, though they are often referred to in this way. These sites varied in purpose and in the types of prisoners detained there.

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The Nazi's was prejudice about the Jews So they had hatred against them and killed them.

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Holocaust denial is any attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Holocaust denial and distortion are forms of antisemitism, prejudice against or hatred of Jews. Holocaust denial and distortion generally claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests.

These views perpetuate long-standing antisemitic stereotypes, hateful beliefs that helped lay the groundwork for the Holocaust. Holocaust denial, distortion, and misuse all undermine the truth and our understanding of history.

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Holocaust Denial and Distortion - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Holocaust denial is any attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Holocaust denial and distortion are forms of antisemitism, prejudice against or hatred of Jews.

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The Holocaust was a horrible time during World War 2 where a specific group of people were targeted because of what they believed in.

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The Holocaust (1933-1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933-1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when 1 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as "the Shoah," the Hebrew word for "catastrophe."

When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out mass murder. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. Among other antisemitic measures, the Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organized violence targeting Germany's Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The "Final Solution" was the organized and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945.

Why did the Nazis target Jews?

The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview.

The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany's social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I (1914-1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), the fear of communism, and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.

However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, Middle Ages (500-1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly early modern Europe (1400-1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most other types of antisemitism

The Nazi Party promoted a particularly virulent form of racial antisemitism. It was central to the party's race-based worldview. The Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races and that some of these races were superior to others. They considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior "Aryan" race. They asserted that "Aryans" were locked in a struggle for existence with other, inferior races. Further, the Nazis believed that the so-called "Jewish race" was the most inferior and dangerous of all. According to the Nazis, Jews were a threat that needed to be removed from German society. Otherwise, the Nazis insisted, the "Jewish race" would permanently corrupt and destroy the German people. The Nazis' race-based definition of Jews included many persons who identified as Christians or did not practice Judaism.

Where did the Holocaust take place?

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe's Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people.

The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate.

But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.

Nazi Germany's territorial expansion began in 1938-1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939-1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan.

By 1942-as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances-Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe.

The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.

Geography of the Holocaust

How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people?

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish.

Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:

Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws. These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws.

These included Various forms of public identification and exclusion. antisemitic propaganda, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, public humiliation, and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing).

The most notable example is There were also isolated incidents and other Organized violence. Kristallnacht.pogroms (violent riots).

Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.

in overcrowded Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews ghettos, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions.

Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews' property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust.

Jews had to perform Forced labor. forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses.

Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe's Jews. They referred to this plan as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

What was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"?

The Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (" Endlösung der Judenfrage ") was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was As part of the "Final Solution," mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans.

Mass Shootings

The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents.

Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.

at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.

The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included (special task forces of the SS and police), units. The provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the Einsatzgruppen Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS German military ( Wehrmacht ) SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.

As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces.

Killing Centers

In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called "extermination camps" or "death camps." Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans.

German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers "resettlement actions" or "evacuation transports." In English, they are often referred to as "deportations." Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system, as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars.

The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.

The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor.

My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother."
- Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family

At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims' belongings and remove victims' bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria.

Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers.

What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust?

Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder.

German officials first created ghettos in 1939-1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary.

The Purpose of the Ghettos

German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos.

Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling.

Life in the Ghettos

Life in the ghettos was miserable and dangerous. There was little food and limited sanitation or medical care. Hundreds of thousands of people died by starvation; rampant disease; exposure to extreme temperatures; as well as exhaustion from forced labor. Germans also murdered the imprisoned Jews through brutal beatings, torture, arbitrary shootings, and other forms of arbitrary violence.

Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. spiritual resistance.

Liquidating the Ghettos

Beginning in 1941-1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process "liquidation." It was part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes.

Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution?

Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution.

At the highest level, inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe's Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Adolf Hitler Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann.

However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals.

German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals

(the SD), the the Nazi leaders relied on many German institutions and organizations to help them carry out the Holocaust. Members of Nazi organizations initiated and carried out many anti-Jewish actions before and during World War II. These organizations Schutzstaffel , Protection Squadron). Once the war began, the SS and its police affiliates became especially deadly. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst Gestapo ,Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Order Police played particularly active and deadly roles in the mass murder of Europe's Jews. Other German institutions involved in carrying out the Final Solution included the German military; the German national railway and healthcare systems; the German civil service and criminal justice systems; and German businesses, insurance companies, and banks.

chose to implement the regime's policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans' participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors.

Non-German Governments and Institutions

Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, "allies" refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. "Collaborators" refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany's allies and collaborators included:

The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals.

These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. the Netherlands.

Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily).

The terms "allies" and "collaborators" can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

Individuals across Europe

Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust.

One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews' hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals' motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.

Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews' homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews' possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide.

Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders.

Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.

The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans.

People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies),

How did the Holocaust end?

so-called The Holocaust ended in May 1945 when the major Allied Powers (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives, they overran concentration camps. There they liberated the surviving prisoners, many of whom were Jews. The Allies also encountered and liberated the survivors of death marches. These forced marches consisted of groups of Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp inmates who had been evacuated on foot from camps under SS guard.

But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.

How did some Jews survive the Holocaust?

Despite Nazi Germany's efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck.

Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe

Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.

Survival in German-Controlled Europe

A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements. Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers.

Aftermath

While the Holocaust ended with the war, the legacy of terror and genocide did not. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others were dead. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators had devastated or completely destroyed thousands of Jewish communities across Europe.

In the those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of aftermath of the Holocaust, postwar violence and antisemitism. In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps. There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible. These important efforts remain ongoing.

Last Edited: Nov 5, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Introduction to the Holocaust: What was the Holocaust?

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Learn about the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

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https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust#ref215485
Hitler wanted to kill every Jew because he thought they were useless.

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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 Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question." Yiddish-speaking Jews and survivors in the years immediately following their liberation called the murder of the Jews the Ḥurban, the word used to describe the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 bce and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce. Shoʾah ("Catastrophe") is the term preferred by Israelis and the French, most especially after Claude Lanzmann's masterful 1985 motion picture documentary of that title. It is also preferred by people who speak Hebrew and by those who want to be more particular about the Jewish experience or who are uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust. Less universal and more particular, Shoʾah emphasizes the annihilation of the Jews, not the totality of Nazi victims. More particular terms also were used by Raul Hilberg, who called his pioneering work The Destruction of the European Jews, and Lucy S. Dawidowicz, who entitled her book on the Holocaust The War Against the Jews. In part she showed how Germany fought two wars simultaneously: World War II and the racial war against the Jews. The Allies fought only the World War. 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.

Discover how the Jews were discriminated, excluded and systematically disposed of their rights during Hitler's Reich

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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." In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"; 1925-27), Hitler further developed the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination. Nazi anti-Semitism was rooted in religious anti-Semitism and enhanced by political anti-Semitism. To this the Nazis added a further dimension: racial anti-Semitism. Nazi racial ideology characterized the Jews as Untermenschen (German: "subhumans"). The Nazis portrayed the Jews as a race and not as a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation.

Hitler's worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion (that is, greater Lebensraum-"living space"-for the German people) and racial supremacy. After World War I the Allies denied Germany colonies in Africa, so Hitler sought to expand German territory and secure food and resources-scarce during World War I-in Europe itself. Hitler viewed the Jews as racial polluters, a cancer on German society in what has been termed by Holocaust survivor and historian Saul Friedländer "redemptive anti-Semitism," focused on redeeming Germany from its ills and ridding it of a cancer on the body politic. Historian Timothy Snyder characterized the struggle as even more elemental, as "zoological," and "ecological," a struggle of the species. Hitler opposed Jews for the values they brought into the world. Social justice and compassionate assistance to the weak stood in the way of what he perceived as the natural order, in which the powerful exercise unrestrained power. In Hitler's view, such restraint on the exercise of power would inevitably lead to the weakening, even the defeat, of the master race.

When Hitler came to power legally on January 30, 1933, as the head of a coalition government, his first objective was to consolidate power and to eliminate political opposition. The assault against the Jews began on April 1 with a boycott of Jewish businesses. A week later the Nazis dismissed Jews from the civil service, and by the end of the month the participation of Jews in German schools was restricted by a quota. On May 10 thousands of Nazi students, together with many professors, stormed university libraries and bookstores in 30 cities throughout Germany to remove tens of thousands of books written by non- Aryans and those opposed to Nazi ideology. The books were tossed into bonfires in an effort to cleanse German culture of "un-Germanic" writings. A century earlier Heinrich Heine -a German poet of Jewish origin-had said, "Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people." In Nazi Germany the time between the burning of Jewish books and the burning of Jews was eight years.

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As discrimination against Jews increased, German law required a legal definition of a Jew and an Aryan. Promulgated at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nürnberg on September 15, 1935, the Nürnberg Laws-the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Law of the Reich Citizen-became the centrepiece of anti-Jewish legislation and a precedent for defining and categorizing Jews in all German-controlled lands. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and citizens of "German or kindred blood" were prohibited. Only "racial" Germans were entitled to civil and political rights. Jews were reduced to subjects of the state. The Nürnberg Laws formally divided Germans and Jews, yet neither the word German nor the word Jew was defined. That task was left to the bureaucracy. Two basic categories were established in November: Jews, those with at least three Jewish grandparents; and Mischlinge ("mongrels," or "mixed breeds"), people with one or two Jewish grandparents. Thus, the definition of a Jew was primarily based not on the identity an individual affirmed or the religion he or she practiced but on his or her ancestry. Categorization was the first stage of destruction.

Responding with alarm to Hitler's rise, the Jewish community sought to defend their rights as Germans. For those Jews who felt themselves fully German and who had patriotically fought in World War I, the Nazification of German society was especially painful. Zionist activity intensified. "Wear it with pride," journalist Robert Weltsch wrote in 1933 of the Jewish identity the Nazis had so stigmatized. Religious philosopher Martin Buber led an effort at Jewish adult education, preparing the community for the long journey ahead. Rabbi Leo Baeck circulated a prayer for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in 1935 that instructed Jews on how to behave: "We bow down before God; we stand erect before man." Yet while few, if any, could foresee its eventual outcome, the Jewish condition was increasingly perilous and was expected to worsen.

By the late 1930s there was a desperate search for countries of refuge. Those who could obtain visas and qualify under stringent quotas emigrated to the United States. Many went to Palestine, where the small Jewish community was willing to receive refugees. Still others sought refuge in neighbouring European countries. Most countries, however, were unwilling to receive large numbers of refugees.

Responding to domestic pressures to act on behalf of Jewish refugees, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt convened, but did not attend, the Évian Conference on resettlement, in Évian-les-Bains, France, in July 1938. In his invitation to government leaders, Roosevelt specified that they would not have to change laws or spend government funds; only philanthropic funds would be used for resettlement. Britain was assured that Palestine would not be on the agenda. The result was that little was attempted and less accomplished.

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Holocaust | Definition, Concentration Camps, History, & Facts

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Holocaust, 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. Today the Holocaust is viewed as the emblematic manifestation of absolute evil. Learn more about the Holocaust in this article.

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Genocide is the killing of an ethnic group or nation. This is seen in the Holocaust.

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In larger centres, ghettos were shut in by walls, fences or barbed wire.They were force to do hard work and barely survived.https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/ghettos-in-the-holocaust

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation. Many also perished in nearby slave labour camps, where conditions were even worse.

The Soviet-occupied zone of Poland fell into German hands following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Killing squads called Einsatzgruppen rounded up and shot Jewish men, women and children, as well as communist officials and others considered racially or ideologically dangerous. Surviving Jews were forced into ghettos.

In March 1942 the Nazis began deporting ghetto inhabitants as part of Operation 'Reinhard', the plan to systematically murder Jews in the part of German-occupied Poland not fully incorporated into the Reich, known as the General Government. From 1942 to 1944, the ghettos were liquidated and their Jewish inhabitants either shot or transported to extermination camps.

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation.

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The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, Italy. Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live in the quarter, which was established in 1516. In the 16th and 17th centuries, officials ranging from local authorities to the Austrian emperor ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome, Prague, and other cities.

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German authorities persecuted other groups on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds. Among them were Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

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Prisoners were subjected to unimaginable terrors from the moment they arrived in the camps; it was a dehumanizing existence that involved a struggle for survival against a system designed to annihilate them. They usually put them through hard work or put them in a gas chamber, that killed them.https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/daily-life-in-the-concentration-camps

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Introduction

The first concentration camp in the Nazi system, Dachau, opened in March, 1933. By the end of World War II, the Nazis administered a massive system of more than 40,000 camps that stretched across Europe from the French-Spanish border into the conquered Soviet territories, and as far south as Greece and North Africa. The largest number of prisoners were Jews, but individuals were arrested and imprisoned for a variety of reasons, including ethnicity and political affiliation. Prisoners were subjected to unimaginable terrors from the moment they arrived in the camps; it was a dehumanizing existence that involved a struggle for survival against a system designed to annihilate them.

Within the camps, the Nazis established a hierarchical identification system and prisoners were organized based on nationality and grounds for incarceration. Prisoners with a higher social status within the camp were often rewarded with more desirable work assignments such as administrative positions indoors. Some, such as the kapos (work supervisors) or camp elders held the power of life and death over other prisoners. Those lower on the social ladder had more physically demanding tasks such as factory work, mining, and construction, and suffered a much higher mortality rate from the combined effects of physical exhaustion, meager rations, and extremely harsh treatment from guards and some kapos. Prisoners also staffed infirmaries, kitchens, and served various other functions within the camp. Living conditions were harsh and extreme but varied greatly from camp to camp and also changed over time.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to selected materials on daily life in the Nazi concentration camps that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given the call number in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might find these works in a nearby public or academic library, or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Background Information

Personal Accounts

Renouard, Jean-Pierre. My Stripes Were Earned in Hell: A French Resistance Fighter's Memoir of Survival in a Nazi Prison Camp. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012.

(D 805 .G3 R43213 2012). [ Find in a library near you]

Recounts the author's experience in three concentration camps after being arrested by the Gestapo in May 1944 for his involvement in the French underground resistance in the town of Albi. Details his initial internment in Neuengamme, his transfer after two months to Misburg, and his second transfer to Bergen-Belsen where he survived until liberation in April 1945. Describes the daily life, social hierarchies, and the author's personal suffering and struggles in each of the camps.

Online Resources

Provides an extensive, searchable listing of camps, organized by type, with a special emphasis on lesser-known subcamps. Also includes survivor interviews, a glossary of camp terminology, and a listing of companies that used concentration camp inmates for slave labor. A project of JewishGen, a major Jewish genealogy Web site.

Holocaust Encyclopedia: Classification System in Nazi Concentration Camps
Overview of different prisoner categories in the camps and their color-coded uniform markings. Includes an image of a classification chart based on badges worn my prisoners.

Brief videos of several survivors describing their experiences in the camps.

Additional Resources

Subject Headings

When searching library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on life in the concentration camps or related topics, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations. Ask a librarian for assistance in using subject headings to help with your research.

Concentration camps

World War, 1939-1945-Concentration camps

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Personal narratives.

See all Bibliographies

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The first concentration camp in the Nazi system, Dachau, opened in March, 1933. By the end of World War II, the Nazis administered a massive system of more than 40,000 camps that stretched across Europe from the French-Spanish border into the conquered Soviet territories, and as far south as Greece and North Africa.

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The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine promotes universal respect for human rights through outreach and education. Using the lessons of the Holocaust and other events past and present we encourage individuals and communities to reflect and act upon their moral responsibilities to confront prejudice, intolerance and discrimination.

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https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-11/persistence-antisemitism
Antisemitism is hating or to prejudice a certain type of people

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Learn about the lingering threats of antisemitism that Jews in Europe, and especially Poland, faced after the Holocaust.

Get everything you need including content from this page.

Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening.

- Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Learn about the lingering threats of antisemitism that Jews in Europe, and especially Poland, faced after the Holocaust.

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Death marches is when the victims are forced to walk throw snow and thick mud to go to different camps, and if they fell behind they would get shot and killed.https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/death-marches

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By the winter of 1944 to 1945, German defeat in World War II was all but certain. Soviet forces were approaching from the east, pushing through Poland toward Berlin, while American and British soldiers had liberated Paris and Brussels in late summer 1944 and were advancing toward the Rhine River in western Germany. Although Nazi leaders and the German population were increasingly aware that the war was lost, the disintegrating Reich continued to murder its victims, including hundreds of thousands of Jews.

As Allied soldiers approached Auschwitz and other concentration and labor camps in the early months of 1945, German authorities feverishly worked to cover up the evidence of their mass killings of Europe’s Jews by burning documents, buildings, and corpses. The Nazis moved thousands of prisoners, both Jews and non-Jews, from near the eastern battlefront to camps inside the Reich, away from the advancing enemy troops, where the healthier prisoners could continue to be used as slave labor for the German war effort.

1 The Germans called this process “forced evacuations.” To the victims, they became known as death marches. Forced into open rail cars or marched by foot through mud and snow, sick and exhausted prisoners were moved from camp to camp, exposed to the elements and the violent behavior of SS guards, and shot if they fell behind. One survivor recalled:

No food had touched my lips all the day before. Others “snatched” whatever they could—grass, snails, potatoes left in the fields—but my throat was blocked, although my stomach was growling with hunger. I had nothing else, so I ate snow. My whole body shook with cold. . . .

The march went on for days and nights and nobody knew where we were being taken. If they want to mow us down somewhere with machine guns, why don’t they do it immediately? Or, perhaps there are special installations for that? Perhaps they are taking us again to some new installations for killing by gas? But it seemed that there was no need for any of that; at least two-thirds of the prisoners were already lying lifeless by the roadside. In a few days all of us would suffer the same fate.
2

The prisoner evacuations were chaotic. Once they left a camp, the columns of prisoners were under the total control of the German guards, but the guards themselves were often disorganized and gave confusing directions to prisoners about where to go. Also, the guards brought with them little food or supplies for the sick, wounded, and starving men and women as they walked through towns and villages on their way back to labor camps in Germany. Historian Daniel Blatman writes, “This state of havoc generated the conditions that transformed the evacuations into gruesome death marches. The aimless wandering that often characterized the evacuation gradually took on an absurd and threatening aspect.”

3

Often, faced with the chaos of the end of the war and the approach of the Allied forces, SS guards simply murdered all of their prisoners. Local Germans, coming face to face with “enemies” they hated and feared at a time when their world was crumbling around them, joined in massacres of Jews and other prisoners being marched through their towns and villages.

4 In all, some 250,000 prisoners of the concentration camp system were killed on death marches.

One of those prisoners was Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti. Radnóti wrote poems during his imprisonment and evacuation from a forced labor camp in Yugoslavia. He was shot to death during a death march in November 1944 and buried in a mass grave. When the grave was exhumed months later, several poems were discovered in his clothing, including one now known as “Forced March.”

A fool he is who, collapsed,      rises and walks again,
Ankles and knees moving      alone, like wandering pain,
Yet he, as if wings uplifted him,       sets out on his way,
And in vain the ditch calls him      back, who dare not stay.
And if asked why not, he might answer      — without leaving his path —
That his wife was awaiting him,      and a saner, more beautiful death.
Poor fool! He's out of his mind:      now, for a long time,
Only scorched winds have whirled            over the houses at home,
The wall has been laid low,      the plum-tree is broken there,
The night of our native hearth      flutters, thick with fear.
Oh if only I could believe      that everything of worth
Were not just in my heart —       that I still had home on earth;
If only I had! As before,      jam made fresh from the plum
Would cool on the old verandah,      in peace the bee would hum
And an end-of summer stillness      would bask in the drowsy garden,
Naked among the leaves      would sway the fruit-trees' burden,
And Fanni would be waiting,      blonde, by russet hedgerow,
As the slow morning painted      slow shadow over shadow —
Could it perhaps still be?      The moon tonight's so round!
Don't leave me friend, shout at me:      I'll get up off the ground!
5

Citations

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Learn how the Germans tried to hide evidence of their mass murder toward the end of World War II by evacuating prisoners from camps.

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A history of the Nuremberg Trial focusing on the judges and the paths by which they reached their verdicts. Recounts the reaction of each judge to various events in the trial, discusses the legality of the trial, and reviews the performance of the prosecution and defense in legal terms.https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/the-nuremberg-trials

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Introduction

On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) delivered its judgment against the Nazi leaders on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years, and three were acquitted.

Once the IMT established the criminality of aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, subsequent trials could determine the guilt of other Nazi officials and military leaders accused of those crimes. In these cases, later known as Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, defendants represented many segments of German society, from jurists and politicians to physicians, businessmen, collaborators and army officers.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to materials on the Nuremberg Trial, or International Military Tribunal, held between October 18, 1945 and October 1, 1946, that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Trial Proceedings and Judgments

Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946. Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1995. (JX 5437.3 .I58 1995) [ Find in a library near you]

Comprehensive forty-two volume set of documents and testimony from the first war crimes trial at Nuremberg. Commonly known as the Blue Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1996. (Reference JX 5437.3 .U65 1996) [ Find in a library near you]

Eight-volume set of the decision of the International Military Tribunal against the defendants at Nuremberg. Summarizes the crimes for which the defendants were put on trial and explains the Court's decision against each defendant. Includes the dissenting verdicts and the sentences handed down to the criminals. Also known as the Red Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

General Histories

Kahn, Leo. Nuremberg Trials. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (D 804 .G42 K343 1972) [ Find in a library near you]

Historical overview of the Nuremberg trials extensively illustrated with black and white photographs. Part of Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

Personal Accounts and Memoirs

Primary Sources and Documentation

Bard, Mitchell, editor. The Nuremberg Trial. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2002. (KZ 1176 .N87 2002) [ Find in a library near you]

Presents translated excerpts of primary source documentation from all aspects of the IMT, including preparation for the trial, the prosecution arguments, and the verdicts. Part of the History Firsthand series.

Film and Video

Aftermath: WWII Documentary Collection [videorecording]. [S.l.]: VCI Home Video, 1998. (Video Collection) [ Find in a library near you]

Collection of documentary films produced by the United States Department of the Army. The film Nuremberg combines historical footage of film actually shown as evidence against the defendants and interweaves the trial sequences to match the four counts of the indictments. The other three parts of this collection include Nazi Concentration Camps, We All Came Home, and Reunion.

Museum Web Resources

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the subject file labeled Nuremberg Trials (International Military Tribunal) containing newspaper and periodical articles.

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on the Nuremberg trials or related topics, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations. Ask a librarian for assistance in using subject headings to help with your research.

International Military Tribunal

Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946

See all Bibliographies

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On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

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Hitler became chancellor in 1933 and many people thought he was the nations savior.

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During WW2, German occupation authorities kept urban and regional Jewish populations in ghettos.

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Nazi Camps were made to hold communists or biologically or racially inferior people, especially Jews. The usually ended up murdering people in them.

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Death marches were marches that concentration camp prisoners were forced to do. Guards were ordered to kill anyone who could no longer walk.

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The Nuremberg Trials were trials to bring Nazi criminals to justice.

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when some people could not walk in a death walk they would die before they could get their

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the trials help people get revenge on the Nazis

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people call ghettos were jew, Venice, and Italy when they were in quarters

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Many people wonder how Adolf Hitler was able to take control of Germany and the Nazi Party before beginning World War II. But how did Hitler rise to power so quickly? You may be surprised to learn that every step in Hitler's rise to power was legal — and democratic. Read Hitler's rise to power timeline to learn how a series of events enabled a wounded veteran from Austria to become one of the most infamous dictators in world history.

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Many people wonder how Adolf Hitler was able to take control of Germany and the Nazi Party before beginning World War II. But how did Hitler rise to power so quickly? You may be surprised to learn that every step in Hitler's rise to power was legal - and democratic. Read Hitler's rise to power timeline to learn how a series of events enabled a wounded veteran from Austria to become one of the most infamous dictators in world history.

Adolf Hitler Platz Nazi salute

Hitler's Entrance Into Politics

Despite being born in Austria, Adolf Hitler spent four years fighting in World War I in the German Army. He was temporarily blinded and mute from a mustard gas attack in 1918, just one month before Germany surrendered the war on November 10th. Hitler's outrage over Germany's loss - and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which placed the blame for World War I on Germany - inspired him to pursue a life in politics.

1919: The German Worker's Party

In September 1919, Hitler joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (the German Worker's Party, or DAP) after being assigned to spy on it for the German Army in June. He respected the party's opposition to the new Weimar Republic, the Treaty of Versailles and equal treatment of Jews in Germany. Hitler quickly became one of the most prominent speakers of the party.

1920: The National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP)

On February 24th, Hitler led a political meeting of over 2,000 people. He announced the nationalist Twenty-Five Point Program, also known as the National Socialist Program, and officially renamed the party as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (the National Socialist German Worker's Party), later known as the Nazi Party. Hitler also began to speak in beer halls in Munich as a way to reach and recruit more people. His speaking and propaganda skills made him a popular figure throughout Bavaria.

1921: Chairman of the NSDAP

Hitler threatened to resign from the NSDAP over the possibility of merging with the German Socialist Party. As he was the party's most well-known and influential figure, the party agreed not to merge with the rival party and to appoint Hitler party chairman. He now controlled the NSDAP, and led it into violent conflicts against other German political parties. Hitler formed the Sturmabteilung (Assault Division, also known as the SA or Brownshirts).

1922: The Hitler Youth and the Staff Guard

Hitler established three major organizations in 1922: the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler and the Jugendbund der NSDAP (the Hitler Youth) and the Stabswache (the Staff Guard, later the SS). He continued to speak against Jews and for the "victory of the Aryan" at party rallies. In October, Hitler admired Benito Mussolini's Fascist coup d'état in Italy.

1923: Reichsparteitag and The Beer Hall Putsch

The first Reichsparteitag (Reich Party Convention, or Nuremberg Rally) took place in January 1923 in Munich. Later in the year, Hitler attempted his own coup d'état in November 1923 during the Beer Hall Putsch, in which 2,000 Nazis marched on the city center. Sixteen Nazis and four police officers were killed. Hitler escaped but was arrested for high treason two days later. The incident gave Hitler a national profile.

1924: Mein Kampf and 1924 Elections

At his 1924 trial, Hitler was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. He wrote Mein Kampf ( My Struggle), a manifesto to the Nazi propaganda and anti-Semitism, during his imprisonment. Although the Nazi Party was banned in Bavaria after the Beer Hall Putsch, it won a few seats in government in the May and December German federal elections. Hitler was released in December after serving only nine months of his sentence.

1925: Legal Power Over Physical Force

The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch and influence of Mussolini prompted Hitler to move toward legal means of gaining power, rather than violence. Mein Kampf was published in July 1925, making Hitler famous in the European Fascist movement. Hitler formed the Schutzstaffel (SS) outside the control of the SA. He formally renounced his Austrian Citizenship in 1924 as well.

Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany. Joseph Goebbels joined the Nazi Party during this time period after reading Mein Kampf. He would later become Hitler's closest ally and the future Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.

The Rise of the Nazi Party

Hitler and the Nazi Party were starting to gain some recognition outside Bavaria and throughout Germany. During the rest of the 1920s, the party used anti-Semitic propaganda and Hitler's popularity to move into legitimate politics. They gained voters and seats in every federal election, causing the moderate parties to take notice - and alarm.

1928: May Federal Election

Federal elections were more successful for the NSDAP than before, but still not strong: the Nazi Party won only 2.6% of the vote. However, by the end of the year, the Nazi party included more than 130,000 members.

1929: Presidential Election and Stock Market Crash

The Nazi candidate for president, Erich Ludendorff, ran for president and only won 1.1% of the vote. The New York Stock Market crash of October 29th led to a major financial disruption all over the world. Massive numbers of German citizens were now unemployed and in financial distress.

The German Referendum of 1929 was held in December. It renounced the Treaty of Versailles and disallowed German officials to pay German war debts from World War I. Although the referendum ultimately failed, it gave the Nazi Party substantial recognition.

1930: Street Violence and Election Success

In 1930 there was an escalation of street violence instigated by the Nazis and propaganda by Goebbels. In the September federal election, Nazis won over 18% of the vote and gained 107 government seats. When combined with the Communists receiving almost 22% of the vote, the results of the election effectively locked out the more moderate parties of Germany. The Nazis were now the second-largest party in Germany.

Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor of Germany, attempted to alleviate financial pressure on Germany by invoking Article 48 of the German Constitution. This allowed the government to pass laws without the consent of the Reichstag, or parliamentary body.

1931: The Harzburg Front

Hitler joined a right-wing opposition to Chancellor Brüning called the Harzburg Front. It was an anti-democratic effort to form a united front against the moderate German government. However, the Nazis had no intention of joining forces with anyone; they wanted to be in control, with Hitler in command.

1932: Industrielleneingabe and Party Majority

The Nazi Party now had over 800,000 members. Hitler ran for president in the March 1932 presidential election and lost to President Hindenburg, but gained over 36% of the vote. In May, Chancellor Brüning was replaced by Franz von Papen in an effort by President Hindenburg to try and stop Hitler's political ascent.

The Nazis won over 37% of the popular vote in July 1932. They were now the largest party in the Reichstag, and as such, they chose Hermann Göring to be Reichstag President. Hitler asked to be chancellor; when Chancellor Papen offered him the position of vice-Chancellor, Hitler refused.

In November, the Nazis received a lower percentage of the vote, but 19 prominent members of the German economy signed the Industrielleneingabe - a petition for President Hindenburg to make Hitler chancellor of Germany. In December, Chancellor Papen was replaced by Major-General Kurt von Schleicher, a rival of Hitler's. Papen made an agreement with Hitler that he could convince Hindenburg to make Hitler chancellor, as long as Hitler made Papen vice-chancellor.

Machtergreifung: Hitler Takes Power

By 1933, Hitler's political maneuvers would pay off for him and the Nazi Party. The timing of the Great Depression helped Hitler's cause, as millions of out-of-work Germans hung their hopes on Hitler's promises of prosperity. Just a few years later, Hitler would lead Germany into World War II in the ultimate test of his power and of humanity itself.

1933: Hitler Becomes Chancellor

Hitler's Machtergreifung (seizure of power) began when he was named chancellor in January 1933, thanks to Papen's influence and Hindenburg's agreement. His appointment sparked concern in both neighboring democracies and in the Jewish community. In February, the Reichstag was attacked by a Communist arsonist, leading to swift action against Hitler's political rivals.

Hitler gained plenary powers in March from the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave him the ability to act without limitations from the Reichstag or the German Constitution. Once Hitler had these dictatorial powers, he eliminated civil liberties and opportunities for opposition. Political parties that were not Nazi parties were made illegal in July. In October, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference.

1934: Hitler Becomes Führer

During Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives), Hitler instructed the SS to execute various political rivals and opponents, including leaders of the SA, which had become increasingly independent from Hitler's control. Because Hitler had plenary powers, he was able to order the killings without the consent of the courts. Over 150 people were murdered in the purge between June 30th and July 2nd, and hundreds more were arrested.

On July 3rd, Vice-Chancellor Papen resigned. President Hindenburg died a month later. The day before he died, Hitler's cabinet enacted a law that would abolish the role of the president, and that all powers of the president would be merged with the chancellor's upon Hinderburg's death. This allowed Hitler to become Führer und Reichskanzler - leader and chancellor - and therefore head of the government. Soldiers of the German Army took the Hitler Oath, swearing allegiance and obedience to Hitler himself instead of the state.

World War II

As Führer, Hitler would go on to isolate Germany from the rest of the world, both politically and economically. He rearmed Germany in a violation of the Treaty of Versailles and began expanding Germany's borders by annexing Austria in 1938. By 1941, Hitler's army had invaded the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. His seige against Britain and the Soviet Union, along with the Japanese attack on the United States, brought nearly every country in the world out in force.

Under Hitler's command, Nazi Germany established over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos to detain, enslave and murder prisoners. These prisoners primarily included Jews from Germany and other invaded countries as well as political opponents, homosexuals, Roma, and foreign nationals. All told, Hitler's pursuit of power caused the deaths of 75 million people before his own death in 1945.

A Cautionary Tale for Democracy Everywhere

The results of Adolf Hitler's rule were catastrophic and devastating to every community in the world. However, he would never have been able to move up the ranks of the German government without the backing of his supporters and political allies. The twenty years before World War II serve as a historical reminder of what can happen when fascism is allowed to invade democracy. Next, check out a reference guide about the difference between fascism vs. socialism vs. communism.

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How Did Hitler Rise to Power? Timeline of Key Events

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Many people wonder how Adolf Hitler was able to take control of Germany and the Nazi Party before beginning World War II. But how did Hitler rise to power so quickly? You may be surprised to learn that every step in Hitler's rise to power was legal - and democratic.

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the jews were put in camps known as nazi camps

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By mid-1941, nearly all Jews in occupied Poland had been forced into these overcrowded districts. In the Warsaw ghetto, by far the largest, 490,000 Jews and a few hundred Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) struggled to survive despite extreme hardship.

In larger centres, ghettos were shut in by walls, fences or barbed wire. No one could leave or enter without a special permit. Each community was ordered to set up a Judenrat (Jewish Council), which would be responsible for enforcing German orders.

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation. Many also perished in nearby slave labour camps, where conditions were even worse.

The Soviet-occupied zone of Poland fell into German hands following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Killing squads called Einsatzgruppen rounded up and shot Jewish men, women and children, as well as communist officials and others considered racially or ideologically dangerous. Surviving Jews were forced into ghettos.

In March 1942 the Nazis began deporting ghetto inhabitants as part of Operation 'Reinhard', the plan to systematically murder Jews in the part of German-occupied Poland not fully incorporated into the Reich, known as the General Government. From 1942 to 1944, the ghettos were liquidated and their Jewish inhabitants either shot or transported to extermination camps.

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation.

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Hitler come to power when he made a speech to the Germany so they became soldiers

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By the winter of 1944 to 1945, German defeat in World War II was all but certain. Soviet forces were approaching from the east, pushing through Poland toward Berlin, while American and British soldiers had liberated Paris and Brussels in late summer 1944 and were advancing toward the Rhine River in western Germany. Although Nazi leaders and the German population were increasingly aware that the war was lost, the disintegrating Reich continued to murder its victims, including hundreds of thousands of Jews.

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By the winter of 1944 to 1945, German defeat in World War II was all but certain. Soviet forces were approaching from the east, pushing through Poland toward Berlin, while American and British soldiers had liberated Paris and Brussels in late summer 1944 and were advancing toward the Rhine River in western Germany. Although Nazi leaders and the German population were increasingly aware that the war was lost, the disintegrating Reich continued to murder its victims, including hundreds of thousands of Jews.

As Allied soldiers approached Auschwitz and other concentration and labor camps in the early months of 1945, German authorities feverishly worked to cover up the evidence of their mass killings of Europe’s Jews by burning documents, buildings, and corpses. The Nazis moved thousands of prisoners, both Jews and non-Jews, from near the eastern battlefront to camps inside the Reich, away from the advancing enemy troops, where the healthier prisoners could continue to be used as slave labor for the German war effort.

1 The Germans called this process “forced evacuations.” To the victims, they became known as death marches. Forced into open rail cars or marched by foot through mud and snow, sick and exhausted prisoners were moved from camp to camp, exposed to the elements and the violent behavior of SS guards, and shot if they fell behind. One survivor recalled:

No food had touched my lips all the day before. Others “snatched” whatever they could—grass, snails, potatoes left in the fields—but my throat was blocked, although my stomach was growling with hunger. I had nothing else, so I ate snow. My whole body shook with cold. . . .

The march went on for days and nights and nobody knew where we were being taken. If they want to mow us down somewhere with machine guns, why don’t they do it immediately? Or, perhaps there are special installations for that? Perhaps they are taking us again to some new installations for killing by gas? But it seemed that there was no need for any of that; at least two-thirds of the prisoners were already lying lifeless by the roadside. In a few days all of us would suffer the same fate.
2

The prisoner evacuations were chaotic. Once they left a camp, the columns of prisoners were under the total control of the German guards, but the guards themselves were often disorganized and gave confusing directions to prisoners about where to go. Also, the guards brought with them little food or supplies for the sick, wounded, and starving men and women as they walked through towns and villages on their way back to labor camps in Germany. Historian Daniel Blatman writes, “This state of havoc generated the conditions that transformed the evacuations into gruesome death marches. The aimless wandering that often characterized the evacuation gradually took on an absurd and threatening aspect.”

3

Often, faced with the chaos of the end of the war and the approach of the Allied forces, SS guards simply murdered all of their prisoners. Local Germans, coming face to face with “enemies” they hated and feared at a time when their world was crumbling around them, joined in massacres of Jews and other prisoners being marched through their towns and villages.

4 In all, some 250,000 prisoners of the concentration camp system were killed on death marches.

One of those prisoners was Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti. Radnóti wrote poems during his imprisonment and evacuation from a forced labor camp in Yugoslavia. He was shot to death during a death march in November 1944 and buried in a mass grave. When the grave was exhumed months later, several poems were discovered in his clothing, including one now known as “Forced March.”

A fool he is who, collapsed,      rises and walks again,
Ankles and knees moving      alone, like wandering pain,
Yet he, as if wings uplifted him,       sets out on his way,
And in vain the ditch calls him      back, who dare not stay.
And if asked why not, he might answer      — without leaving his path —
That his wife was awaiting him,      and a saner, more beautiful death.
Poor fool! He's out of his mind:      now, for a long time,
Only scorched winds have whirled            over the houses at home,
The wall has been laid low,      the plum-tree is broken there,
The night of our native hearth      flutters, thick with fear.
Oh if only I could believe      that everything of worth
Were not just in my heart —       that I still had home on earth;
If only I had! As before,      jam made fresh from the plum
Would cool on the old verandah,      in peace the bee would hum
And an end-of summer stillness      would bask in the drowsy garden,
Naked among the leaves      would sway the fruit-trees' burden,
And Fanni would be waiting,      blonde, by russet hedgerow,
As the slow morning painted      slow shadow over shadow —
Could it perhaps still be?      The moon tonight's so round!
Don't leave me friend, shout at me:      I'll get up off the ground!
5

Citations

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Learn how the Germans tried to hide evidence of their mass murder toward the end of World War II by evacuating prisoners from camps.

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On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany’s political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

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Introduction

On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) delivered its judgment against the Nazi leaders on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years, and three were acquitted.

Once the IMT established the criminality of aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, subsequent trials could determine the guilt of other Nazi officials and military leaders accused of those crimes. In these cases, later known as Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, defendants represented many segments of German society, from jurists and politicians to physicians, businessmen, collaborators and army officers.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to materials on the Nuremberg Trial, or International Military Tribunal, held between October 18, 1945 and October 1, 1946, that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Trial Proceedings and Judgments

Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946. Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1995. (JX 5437.3 .I58 1995) [ Find in a library near you]

Comprehensive forty-two volume set of documents and testimony from the first war crimes trial at Nuremberg. Commonly known as the Blue Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1996. (Reference JX 5437.3 .U65 1996) [ Find in a library near you]

Eight-volume set of the decision of the International Military Tribunal against the defendants at Nuremberg. Summarizes the crimes for which the defendants were put on trial and explains the Court's decision against each defendant. Includes the dissenting verdicts and the sentences handed down to the criminals. Also known as the Red Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

General Histories

Kahn, Leo. Nuremberg Trials. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (D 804 .G42 K343 1972) [ Find in a library near you]

Historical overview of the Nuremberg trials extensively illustrated with black and white photographs. Part of Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

Personal Accounts and Memoirs

Primary Sources and Documentation

Bard, Mitchell, editor. The Nuremberg Trial. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2002. (KZ 1176 .N87 2002) [ Find in a library near you]

Presents translated excerpts of primary source documentation from all aspects of the IMT, including preparation for the trial, the prosecution arguments, and the verdicts. Part of the History Firsthand series.

Film and Video

Aftermath: WWII Documentary Collection [videorecording]. [S.l.]: VCI Home Video, 1998. (Video Collection) [ Find in a library near you]

Collection of documentary films produced by the United States Department of the Army. The film Nuremberg combines historical footage of film actually shown as evidence against the defendants and interweaves the trial sequences to match the four counts of the indictments. The other three parts of this collection include Nazi Concentration Camps, We All Came Home, and Reunion.

Museum Web Resources

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the subject file labeled Nuremberg Trials (International Military Tribunal) containing newspaper and periodical articles.

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on the Nuremberg trials or related topics, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations. Ask a librarian for assistance in using subject headings to help with your research.

International Military Tribunal

Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946

See all Bibliographies

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On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

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Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism.

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Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues.

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The United States has seen a recent increase in antisemitic expression, including a rise in incidents of vandalism, harassment, and assault. However, this is far from the commonplace antisemitism of America in the 1930s and 1940s, when prejudice against Jews shaped American cultural, social, and intellectual life, permeated many of the country’s elite institutions, and formed a part of popular culture. As Joseph W. Bendersky notes in his introduction to these articles, “On this issue … history does not provide a set of specific lessons or applicable formulaic solutions. However, history does offer essential insights and a necessary sense of proportion.” With the intention of informing, and perhaps narrowing, the gap between historical facts and rhetoric, the editors of Holocaust and Genocide Studies offer this special edition on American antisemitism in the Holocaust era, featuring articles from past issues. Read as a whole, these essays offer perspective on an issue of continuing importance.

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Selected articles from Holocaust & Genocide Studies

The United States has seen a recent increase in antisemitic expression, including a rise in incidents of vandalism, harassment, and assault. However, this is far from the commonplace antisemitism of America in the 1930s and 1940s, when prejudice against Jews shaped American cultural, social, and intellectual life, permeated many of the country's elite institutions, and formed a part of popular culture. As Joseph W. Bendersky notes in his introduction to these articles, "On this issue ... history does not provide a set of specific lessons or applicable formulaic solutions. However, history does offer essential insights and a necessary sense of proportion." With the intention of informing, and perhaps narrowing, the gap between historical facts and rhetoric, the editors of Holocaust and Genocide Studies offer this special edition on American antisemitism in the Holocaust era, featuring articles from past issues. Read as a whole, these essays offer perspective on an issue of continuing importance.

Combating Prejudice and Protectionism in American Medicine: The Physicians Committee's Fight for Refugees from Nazism, 1939- 1945
Laurel Leff
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 28, no. 2 (2014): 181-239.
Full text

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The United States has seen a recent increase in antisemitic expression, including a rise in incidents of vandalism, harassment, and assault. However, this is far from the commonplace antisemitism of America in the 1930s and 1940s, when prejudice against Jews shaped American cultural, social, and intellectual life, permeated many of the country's elite institutions, and formed a part of popular culture.

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The aim of the Nazi concentration camps was to contain prisoners in one place.  The administration of the camps had a distinct disregard for inmates’ lives and health, and as a result, tens of thousands of people perished within the camps.

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In the summer of 1944, a massive Soviet offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center.

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Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949.

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Hitler came to power by talking to the people to change their minds about everything and start war.
https://www.livescience.com/54441-how-hitler-rose-to-power.html

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

Adolf Hitler was the unremarkable artist who rose to become the dictator of Germany and the instigator of the Holocaust. Given the devastation left in Hitler's wake, a major question for historians of the 20th century has been how Hitler captured the German imagination and came to power.

He was not, as a person, a charismatic character; biographer Ian Kershaw described him as an "empty vessel outside his political life." He had few genuine friends, an overinflated view of his own intellect and no inborn connections to propel him to the top.

Nor did Hitler have especially original ideas; the German Workers' Party he joined in 1919, which would become the Nazi Party under his leadership, was just one of approximately 70 right-wing groups in Germany after World War I, Kershaw wrote in the biography " Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris (opens in new tab)" (W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).

But in the chaos of post-World War I Germany, it was Hitler's group that would gain dominance - and that was not a matter of luck, said Karl Schleunes, author of " The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews, 1933-39 (opens in new tab)" (University of Illinois Press, 1970).

"What makes the German Workers' Party different from the other 69 groups is that they don't have a Hitler, whose speaker talent and tactics are really quite effective," Schleunes said.

And once he achieved fame, Hitler was able to cover up his rather off-putting personality with media images of a cultured gentleman beloved by children and animals.

The early years

(Image credit: Public Domain)

Hitler's early life does not hint at his future. The son of a low-level civil servant in Austria, Hitler was groomed by his harsh, authoritarian father to become a bureaucrat as well. Other than the beatings from his father, the future dictator's early childhood was relatively normal, but he became sullen and friendless in adolescence, according to Kershaw's biography. He never finished high school and, from 1905 to 1907, sponged off of his mother.

In 1907, Hitler famously failed to win admission to art school, kicking off a period in which he lived in Vienna, making grand pronouncements about art, architecture and culture, but rarely making any serious effort to secure a future in art himself. In 1909, he ended up living for a time in a flophouse for the homeless. He soon turned to supporting himself by selling cheap paintings of city scenes.

In 1913, Hitler went to Munich, fleeing Austrian authorities who'd noticed that he'd dodged mandatory military service there. It was in the German military, however, that Hitler would find direction - and a springboard into politics.

Service in World War I gave Hitler a place in the world for the first time, Kershaw wrote, even as many of his fellow soldiers viewed him as a bit of a socially awkward oddball and prude. Germany admitted defeat in the war as Hitler rested in a hospital, recovering from a mustard gas attack. He returned to his regiment in Munich, Schleunes said, where he ultimately got a job with the information unit, working in military intelligence.

It was this job that put him on a collision course with the German Workers' Party. Hitler had long held right-wing nationalist views, but in a "critical development," Schleunes said, the army sent him to attend university lectures on German history, socialism and bolshevism - from a right-wing perspective.

In particular, Hitler ate up the words of a right-wing economist, Gottfried Feder, and a right-wing historian, Karl Alexander von Müller. It was Müller who noticed that Hitler had a talent for rhetoric, and his recommendations helped Hitler land a job in the intelligence unit as a spy keeping tabs on the German Workers' Party, Schleunes said.

Gaining power

It was Hitler's power as a speaker that turned him from informer to party member, Schleunes said. During a German Workers' Party lecture, someone suggested that it might be best for Bavaria to break from the rest of Germany, splintering the country. Hitler, a German nationalist, was appalled and argued against the idea. The leader of the party, impressed with his speaking style, asked him to join the party. A few days later, on Sept. 12, 1919, Hitler became the 55th member of the party, with the full permission of the army.

Hitler became a fiery speaker on the beer-hall circuit and was willing to risk the humiliation of low turnout by organizing rallies in large spaces, Kershaw wrote. His organizing talents propelled him to the top of the party's leadership.

In 1920, Hitler and the other leaders of the party changed its name from the German Workers' Party to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or "Nazi" for short). In 1921, Hitler was voted chairman of the party and took total control. The once-tiny group began to draw new members, absorbing other right-wing groups, Schleunes said.

Hitler remained a cold presence in person. "He's not an interesting conversationalist," Schleunes said. "He's really sort of a dull person, except when he appears before an audience, when somehow, a switch is turned on. He could milk an audience and shape it and get it to feel."

If Hitler's speaking abilities gave him the roots to flourish in the early Nazi Party, the chaos and resentment of Germany at the time were the soil that made his growth possible.The German people were in shock after losing World War I, Schleunes said. They'd been told throughout the war that they were winning. They faced food and coal shortages, and ended the war with millions killed and wounded. But these sacrifices were necessary, according to the army, because victory was close.

"They're told that for four years, and suddenly, they're told that 'We lost the war,'" Schleunes said. To understand how such a thing could happen, many turned to conspiracy theories - particularly, the theory that Jewish people on the home front had stabbed Germany in the back. "The situation, for someone like Hitler, is ripe," Schleunes said.

A wider popularity

(Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany)

Violence marked Hitler's early rise. By 1923, he was emboldened enough to attempt to overthrow the government of Bavaria by force, which he hoped would eventually lead to the overthrow of the national government in Berlin.

This "Beer Hall Putsch" failed, but there was widespread sympathy for Hitler's aims, Schleunes said. His trial became a megaphone broadcasting his ideas, and his light 9-month stint in prison gave him the opportunity to dictate the "almost unreadable" but wildly popular biography " Mein Kampf," Schleunes said.

"Hitler was smart enough to realize after the failure of his "Beer Hall Putsch" that he and his party could not come to power with violence against the institutions of the state, especially the army and the police," said Dr Benjamin Hett, author of " The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (opens in new tab)" (Henry Holt and Co, 2018). "They could only come to power by getting inside the system, and the path to that was through winning elections".

There were many factors that led to Hitler's more widespread acceptance in Germany, from economic depression to the country's hatred of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. But Hitler managed to expand his appeal from the beer-soaked halls of Munich to the rest of the country, in part via the mass media.

In 1932, he ran for president and struggled to reach middle-class voters, said Despina Stratigakos, a historian of architecture and the author of " Hitler at Home (opens in new tab)" (Yale University Press, 2015). To rehabilitate his personal image, he focused on his domestic portrayal. Instead of downplaying his transient, rather lonely personal history, Hitler and his propaganda team started to foreground his personal life.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

"He's being presented as a good man, a moral man, and the evidence for that comes from his private life," Stratigakos told Live Science. "It's fabricated, but it's very effective."

Hitler lost the 1932 election, but gained the support of many influential industrial interests. When the parliamentary elections failed to establish a majority government, Germany's president Paul von Hindenburg caved to outside pressure and named Hitler chancellor (the role of chancellor in Germany is similar to that of Prime Minister in other parliamentary systems, and Germany had both a president elected by the people and a chancellor representing the majority party in the government).

In 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, which Hitler used as a pretext to seize emergency powers and detain his political enemies. With communists and other leftists under arrest, he was able to push a law called the Enabling Act through parliament. The Enabling Act allowed Hitler's cabinet to institute legislation without parliamentary consent.

With the backing of the conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) and with the left-leaning Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) barred from attending the vote on 24 March 1933, Hitler's proposal was passed by 444 votes to 94, a key step in usurping the democratic institutions of the state.

"In the wake of this law came what the Nazis called 'Gleichschaltung', or coordination, a process in which any organization at all that could possibly form the basis of opposition was abolished or taken over by the Nazis," said Hett. "This process was largely completed by July of 1933, when all political parties except the Nazis were formally outlawed."

As Hitler strong-armed his way to dictatorship, profiles of him rusticating in his residence in Obersalzberg, Bavaria, portrayed him as a cultured gentleman, beloved by dogs and children. Working with the architect Gerdy Troost, Hitler created a space with an expansive Great Hall that seemed inspired by the artist salons of pre-World War I Munich, Stratigakos said. German and English language magazines printed fluffy pieces on the Führer at home.

"Even the American Dog Kennel Gazette had this feature on Hitler as a dog lover," Stratigakos said. These cozy, domestic scenes helped soften the image of the Hitler. The strategy was so successful that the most-sold images of 1934 were pictures of Hitler at home playing with his dogs or with children.

Through his organization, oratory and public relations, Hitler "the nonentity, the mediocrity, the failure," as Kershaw called him, had become not only the chancellor of Germany, but a beloved celebrity. The transformation was complete.

Additional resources

To read more about the life and rise of Hitler, you can visit The National WWII Museum website (opens in new tab). Additionally, you can watch this TED Talk video (opens in new tab) by Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard.

Bibliography

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Hitler's Rise: How a Homeless Artist Became a Murderous Tyrant

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(Image credit: Getty Images) Adolf Hitler was the unremarkable artist who rose to become the dictator of Germany and the instigator of the Holocaust. Given the devastation left in Hitler's wake, a major question for historians of the 20th century has been how Hitler captured the German imagination and came to power.

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Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz begins her poem “For Yom Ha’Shoah” with these lines: “Come, take this giant leap with me / into the other world . . . the other place / where language fails and imagery defies, / denies man’s consciousness . . . and dies / upon the altar of insanity.”

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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ghettos
Jews were kept in quarters in Italy, called "Ghettos"

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Origin of the Term "Ghetto"

The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, Italy. Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live in the quarter, which was established in 1516. In the 16th and 17th centuries, officials ranging from local authorities to the Austrian emperor ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome, Prague, and other cities.

Ghettos during World War II

During World War II, the SS and other German occupation authorities concentrated urban and sometimes regional Jewish populations in ghettos. Living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. The Germans established at least 1,143 ghettos in the occupied eastern territories. There were three types of ghettos:

closed ghettos

open ghettos

destruction ghettos

German occupation authorities established the first ghetto in occupied Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski in October 1939. The largest ghetto in occupied Poland was the Warsaw ghetto. In Warsaw, more than 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.

The Germans ordered Jews in the ghettos to wear identifying badges or armbands. They also required many Jews to carry out forced labor for the German Reich. Nazi-appointed Jewish councils ( Judenraete) administered daily life in the ghettos. A ghetto police force enforced the orders of the German authorities and the ordinances of the Jewish councils. This included facilitating deportations to killing centers. Jewish police officials, like Jewish council members, served at the whim of the German authorities. The Germans did not hesitate to kill those Jewish policemen who were perceived to have failed to carry out orders.

Ghettos and the "Final Solution"

In many places, ghettoization lasted a short time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days. Others lasted for months or years. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population.

With the implementation of the " Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them. Jews were deported to killing centers. German SS and police authorities also deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.

In August 1944, German SS and police completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz.

Resistance in the Ghettos

Jews responded with a variety of resistance efforts. Ghetto residents frequently smuggled food, medicine, weapons, or intelligence across the ghetto walls. These and other such activities often took place without the knowledge or approval of the Jewish councils. On the other hand, some Jewish councils and some individual council members tolerated or encouraged the smuggling because the goods were necessary to keep ghetto residents alive.

The Germans generally showed little concern in principle about religious worship, attendance at cultural events, or participation in youth movements inside the ghetto walls. However, they often saw a "security threat" in any social gathering and would move ruthlessly to incarcerate or kill perceived ringleaders and participants. The Germans generally forbade any form of consistent schooling or education.

In the very beginning, my mother and several other women organized a clandestine school for children who were below the age of work, and it was a wonderful thing because we had something to look forward to
- Charlene Schiff

In some ghettos, members of Jewish resistance movements staged armed uprisings. The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943. There were also violent revolts in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and several smaller ghettos.

Ghettos in Hungary

In Hungary, ghettoization did not begin until the spring of 1944 after the German invasion and occupation. In less than three months, the Hungarian gendarmerie, coordinating with German deportation experts from the Reich Main Office for Security, concentrated nearly 440,000 Jews from all over Hungary except for the capital city, Budapest. They forced the Jews into short-term "destruction ghettos" and then deported them into German custody at the Hungarian border. The Germans deported most of the Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

In Budapest, Hungarian authorities required Jews to confine themselves to marked houses (so-called Star of David houses). On October 15, 1944, leaders of the fascist Arrow Cross movement seized power in a German-sponsored coup. A few weeks later, the Arrow Cross government formally established a ghetto in Budapest. About 63,000 Jews lived in this 0.1 square mile area. Approximately 25,000 Jews who carried certificates indicating they were under the protection of a neutral power were confined in an "international ghetto" in the city. In January 1945, Soviet forces liberated that part of Budapest in which the two ghettos were located and liberated the nearly 90,000 Jewish residents.

Last Edited: Dec 4, 2019

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Ghettos separating Jews from the rest of the population were part of the Nazi plan to destroy Europe's Jews. Read about ghettoization during the Holocaust.

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https://libguides.cccneb.edu/TheHolocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators.

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As the German Army started to lose the war, they were pushed into retreat towards Germany by the Allies. The Allies then began to liberate the hundreds of camps which the Nazis had constructed across occupied Europe.

On 23 July 1944, Majdanek, in eastern Poland, became the first extermination camp to be liberated by the Soviet Army. Abandoned quickly by the German forces, the camp was almost completely intact.

Over the following nine months, hundreds of camps were liberated across Germany and previously occupied territories, including extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau (by the Soviets in January 1945) and Bergen-Belsen (by the British in April 1945).

For many prisoners, liberation was only the beginning of their journey to freedom. The Nazis had stripped survivors of their jobs, their homes, and in many cases, murdered their families. Most had nowhere to go, and many ended up being placed in Displaced Person camps until they could eventually emigrate or settle elsewhere.

The conditions in the camps also took a while to improve because of the poor conditions in post-war Europe. Disease was widespread, and the daily death rate initially remained high. In Bergen-Belsen, 10,000 people died from malnutrition and disease after liberation.

Liberation and Auschwitz

At the end of 1944, facing the reality of the Soviet Army's imminent arrival, Nazi authorities in Auschwitz prepared to abandon the compound and ordered the destruction of evidence of the crimes they had perpetrated-including the human beings who had been living in the camp.

From January 17 to 21, the Nazis transported nearly all remaining inmates to other camps in what became known as death marches toward the inner Reich. A vast number of people would die on these forced marches due to exhaustion, hunger, and cold. Those who were too weak to keep walking were often shot and killed by SS officers and guards.

When their offensive reached Auschwitz, the Soviet Army found almost 7,000 people-exhausted, ill, and traumatized-in the compound. Despite the efforts of Allied troops and doctors, more than half of these people would die within days of the liberation of the camp.

Survival, recovery, and reckoning with loss would be a lifelong project for those who lived beyond the liberation of Auschwitz.

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Research Guides: The Holocaust: Introduction

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As the German Army started to lose the war, they were pushed into retreat towards Germany by the Allies. The Allies then began to liberate the hundreds of camps which the Nazis had constructed across occupied Europe. On 23 July 1944, Majdanek, in eastern Poland, became the first extermination camp to be liberated by the Soviet Army.

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In the holocaust the ghettos was a in the Nazi's process of splitting apart, killing people, and Killing Europe's Jews.

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https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism
This was the hatred for the jews. is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history's most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany. It is important to stand up to antisemitism in all of its forms today.

Teaching About Antisemitism

Confronting Antisemitism Today

#WeRemember #HolocaustRemembrance

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Antisemitism is prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, is history's most extreme example of antisemitism. Violent antisemitism and hatred did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.

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https://www.loc.gov/item/2010015234/

The prisioners were forced to do the death marches and then they would be killed. They were mostly Jews.

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Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Blatman, Daniel. The death marches: the final phase of Nazi genocide. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Web.. https://lccn.loc.gov/2010015234.

APA citation style:

Blatman, D. (2011) The death marches: the final phase of Nazi genocide. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [Web.] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2010015234.

MLA citation style:

Blatman, Daniel. The death marches: the final phase of Nazi genocide. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Web.. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <lccn.loc.gov/2010015234>.

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The death marches : the final phase of Nazi genocide

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From January 1945, in the last months of the Third Reich, about 250,000 inmates of concentration camps perished on death marches and in countless incidents of mass slaughter. They were murdered with merciless brutality by their SS guards, by army and police units, and often by gangs of civilians as they passed through German and Austrian towns and villages.

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https://www.google.com/search?q=how+Hitler+Comes+to+Power&rlz=1CADTIH_enUS966&oq=how+Hitler+Comes+to+Power&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i390l3.3015j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on
after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority.

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds.

Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues.

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how Hitler Comes to Power - Google Search

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues.

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Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945

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Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. Upon achieving power, Hitler smashed the nation's democratic institutions and transformed Germany into a war state intent on conquering Europe for the benefit of the so-called Aryan race. His invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, triggered the European phase of World War II. During the course of the war, Nazi military forces rounded up and executed 11 million victims they deemed inferior or undesirable-"life unworthy of life"-among them Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hitler had supreme authority as führer (leader or guide), but could not have risen to power or committed such atrocities on his own. He had the active support of the powerful German officer class and of millions of everyday citizens who voted for the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party and hailed him as a national savior in gigantic stadium rallies.

How were Hitler and the Nazis possible? How did such odious characters take and hold power in a country that was a world pacesetter in literature, art, architecture, and science, a nation that had a democratic government and a free press in the 1920s?

Hitler rose to power through the Nazi Party, an organization he forged after returning as a wounded veteran from the annihilating trench warfare of World War I. He and other patriotic Germans were outraged and humiliated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which the Allies compelled the new German government, the Weimar Republic, to accept along with an obligation to pay $33 billion in war reparations. Germany also had to give up its prized overseas colonies and surrender valued parcels of home territory to France and Poland. The German army was radically downsized and the nation forbidden to have submarines or an air force. "We shall squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak!" explained one British official.

Paying the crushing reparations destabilized the economy, producing ruinous, runaway inflation. By September 1923, four billion German marks had the equal value of one American dollar. Consumers needed a wheelbarrow to carry enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread.

Hitler, a mesmerizing public speaker, addressed political meetings in Munich calling for a new German order to replace what he saw as an incompetent and inefficient democratic regime. This New Order was distinguished by an authoritarian political system based on a leadership structure in which authority flowed downward from a supreme national leader.

In the new Germany, all citizens would unselfishly serve the state, or Volk; democracy would be abolished; and individual rights sacrificed for the good of the führer state. The ultimate aim of the Nazi Party was to seize power through Germany's parliamentary system, install Hitler as dictator, and create a community of racially pure Germans loyal to their führer, who would lead them in a campaign of racial cleansing and world conquest.

Hitler blamed the Weimar Republic's weakness on the influence of Germany's Jewish and communist minorities, who he claimed were trying to take over the country. "There are only two possibilities," he told a Munich audience in 1922. "Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew." The young Hitler saw history as a process of racial struggle, with the strongest race-the Aryan race-ultimately prevailing by force of arms. "Mankind has grown great in eternal war," Hitler wrote. "It would decay in eternal peace."

Jews represented everything the Nazis found repugnant: finance capitalism (controlled, the Nazis believed, by powerful Jewish financiers), international communism (Karl Marx was a German Jew, and the leadership of the German Communist Party was heavily Jewish), and modernist cultural movements like psychoanalysis and swing music.

Nazi Party foreign policy aimed to rid Europe of Jews and other "inferior" peoples, absorb pure-blooded Aryans into a greatly expanded Germany-a "Third Reich"-and wage unrelenting war on the Slavic "hordes" of Russia, considered by Hitler to be Untermenschen (subhuman).

Once conquered, the Soviet Union would be ruled by the German master race, which would exterminate or subdue millions of Slavs to create lebensraum (living space) for their own farms and communities. In a conquered and racially cleansed Russia, they would work on model farms and factories connected to the homeland by new highways, called autobahns.

Hitler was the ideologue as well as the chief organizer of the Nazi Party. By 1921, the party had a newspaper, an official flag, and a private army-the Sturmabteilung SA (storm troopers)-made up largely of unemployed and disenchanted WWI veterans. By 1923, the SA had grown to 15,000 men and had access to hidden stores of weapons. That year, Hitler and WWI hero General Erich Ludendorff attempted to overthrow the elected regional government of Bavaria in a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

The regular army crushed the rebellion and Hitler spent a year in prison-in loose confinement. In Landsberg Prison, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book brought together, in inflamed language, the racialist and expansionist ideas he had been propagating in his popular beer-hall harangues.

By 1932, the Nazis were the largest political party in the Reichstag. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the Reichstag building in Berlin, and authorities arrested a young Dutch communist who confessed to starting it.

Hitler used this episode to convince President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending many civil liberties throughout Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the right to hold public assemblies. The police were authorized to detain citizens without cause, and the authority usually exercised by regional governments became subject to control by Hitler's national regime.

Almost immediately, Hitler began dismantling Germany's democratic institutions and imprisoning or murdering his chief opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army tremendously, reintroduced conscription, and began developing a new air force-all violations of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's military spending and ambitious public-works programs, including building a German autobahn, helped restore prosperity. His regime also suppressed the Communist Party and purged his own paramilitary storm troopers, whose violent street demonstrations alienated the German middle class.

This bloodletting-called the "Night of the Long Knives"-was hugely popular and welcomed by the middle class as a blow struck for law and order. In fact, many Germans went along with the full range of Hitler's policies, convinced that they would ultimately be advantageous for the country.

In 1938, Hitler began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. He colluded with Austrian Nazis to orchestrate the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany. And in Hitler's most brazenly aggressive act yet, Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland, a mountainous border region populated predominantly by ethnic Germans.

The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but hoping to avoid war-they had been bled white in World War I-these nations chose a policy of appeasement. At a conclave held at Munich in September 1938, representatives of Great Britain and France compelled Czech leaders to cede the Sudetenland in return for Hitler's pledge not to seek additional territory. The following year, the German army swallowed up the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, one of the signers of the Munich pact, had taken Hitler at his word. Returning to Britain with this agreement in hand, he proudly announced that he had achieved "peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."

A year later, German troops stormed into Poland.

Learn More

After being released from prison, Hitler vowed to work within the parliamentary system to avoid a repeat of the Beer Hall Putsch setback. In the 1920s, however, the Nazi Party was still a fringe group of ultraextremists with little political power. It received only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections of 1928.

But the worldwide economic depression and the rising power of labor unions and communists convinced increasing numbers of Germans to turn to the Nazi Party. The Nazis fed on bank failures and unemployment-proof, Hitler said, of the ineffectiveness of democratic government. Hitler pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order (by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations by communists and socialists), eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power.

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How Did Adolf Hitler Happen? | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945.

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https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/ghettos-in-the-holocaust
After the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, they began segregating Jews in ghettos, usually in the most run-down area of a city. there was usually thousands in one city the largest housed 490,000

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation. Many also perished in nearby slave labour camps, where conditions were even worse.

The Soviet-occupied zone of Poland fell into German hands following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Killing squads called Einsatzgruppen rounded up and shot Jewish men, women and children, as well as communist officials and others considered racially or ideologically dangerous. Surviving Jews were forced into ghettos.

In March 1942 the Nazis began deporting ghetto inhabitants as part of Operation 'Reinhard', the plan to systematically murder Jews in the part of German-occupied Poland not fully incorporated into the Reich, known as the General Government. From 1942 to 1944, the ghettos were liquidated and their Jewish inhabitants either shot or transported to extermination camps.

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Jews received little food and the ghettos were overcrowded. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis were rife. Conditions worsened when Jews from small towns and other countries were squeezed in. It is estimated that 500,000 Jews died in the ghettos of disease and starvation.

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During 1933 and 1945 the Germany Nazi's and their allies was getting camps they got more than 44,000 camps during the time of Third Reich.

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https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/nuremberg-trials

This was to bring the Nazi party to justice and make them pay for their crimes.

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The Nuremberg Trials | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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After the war, Allied powers-United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union-came together to form the International Military Tribunal (IMT). From 1945 to 1946, Nazi Germany leaders stood trial for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes.

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The first plan to kill the Jews in Europe, the authorities ordered the concentration and segregation of Jews into Ghettos.

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Introduction

As one of the first steps in the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe, the German authorities ordered the concentration and segregation of Jews into ghettos. Jews from smaller communities were transported into the ghettos of nearby towns and cities. The large number of people and the limited available space and resources resulted in severe overcrowding, starvation, and disease.

Though meant to be only a temporary arrangement, the ghettos, under the governance of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), usually contained some semblance of community, including medical services and religious, educational, and cultural activities. The ghetto occupants tried to live as normal a life as possible, but harsh German directives regularly hampered these efforts. Ordered to surrender their homes and their belongings, and forced to supply labor to the German war machine, the Jews were exploited and tortured while they struggled to survive.

Survival, unfortunately, was short lived. The Nazis ultimately deported countless Jews to the extermination camps under the pretext of "resettlement." A smaller percentage were sent to labor camps or concentration camps. Resistance, when it occurred, showed limited success.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to selected materials on ghettos that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Note: There is a separate annotated bibliography highlighting resources on the Lódz ghetto.

General Works

Corni, Gustavo. Hitler's Ghettos: Voices From a Beleaguered Society 1939-1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (D 804.195 .C6713 2002) [ Find in a library near you]

Uses a variety of sources, including numerous diaries and memoirs, to provide a history of the Eastern European ghetto system as a whole. Includes chapters discussing the Judenräte (Jewish Councils), daily life and society in the ghettos, and Jewish resistance. Extensive bibliography included.

Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. (DS 135 .E83 T78 1996) [ Find in a library near you]

A detailed study of the Judenräte (Jewish Councils) in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. Describes their organization and administration, outlines their economic, judicial, religious, educational, and cultural activities, and analyzes their work in support of the public welfare. Closely examines the Councils' relations with the German authorities and their role in organizing deportations. Includes maps, charts, illustrations, extensive notes, and an index. Supplemented by two appendices.

Kovno

Krakow

Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Krakow Ghetto Registration Forms (1940): Name Index with Document Images. Washington, DC: Registry of Holocaust Survivors, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000. (Names Lists DS 135 .P62 K6834 2000)

A collection of 24,000 registration records created in the Krakow ghetto in July and August 1940. Arranged alphabetically and bound into thirty-eight volumes by the Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Warsaw

Hilberg, Raul, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz, editors. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999. (DS 135 .P62 W2613 1999) [ Find in a library near you]

The secret diary kept by the chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish council) covering the time period September 1939 through July 1942. Documents the activities of the Judenrat and its complex relationship with the German authorities. Describes day-to-day life in the ghetto with great detail and insight. Includes two lengthy historical introductions, supplemental notes, a map of the ghetto, and an index.

Web Resources

Film and Video Archive: Ghettos
Presents archival film footage held by the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of various ghettos, including Warsaw and Krakow.

Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto
An online exhibition prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the history of the Kovno ghetto. Based on secret archives, diaries, drawings, and writings hidden by Kovno's Jews before the ghetto's liquidation. Features numerous photographs, original documents, and drawings.

Holocaust Encyclopedia: Ghettos
Includes entries related to the history and fate of Jewish ghettos under Nazi rule. Summarizes the creation of the ghettos and general conditions within their walls. Provides links to additional entries on the ghettos of Kovno, Krakow, Łódź, and Warsaw, as well as relevant photographs, personal histories, and historical film footage

Includes brief statements (in both text and video format) from Holocaust survivors about their experiences in the ghettos.

Ghetto Fighters' House (external link)
Website of an Israel museum founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors, ghetto fighters and partisans and devoted to the Holocaust and Jewish resistance. Includes information focused on Janusz Korczak, the head of the orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, including excerpts from his writings and historical photographs. Also provides a searchable database of partisans and resistance fighters.

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the following subject files for newspaper and periodical articles:

"Ghettos-Eastern Europe"

"Ghettos-Kovno"

"Ghettos-Lodz"

"Judenrat"

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on ghettos during the Holocaust, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations:

Jewish ghettos-Lithuania

Jewish ghettos-Poland

Jewish councils-Poland

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Lithuania

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Poland

See all Bibliographies

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As one of the first steps in the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe, the German authorities ordered the concentration and segregation of Jews into ghettos. Jews from smaller communities were transported into the ghettos of nearby towns and cities.

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https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/the-nuremberg-trialsOn
October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany’s political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied would punish the leaders who were responsible.

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Introduction

On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) delivered its judgment against the Nazi leaders on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years, and three were acquitted.

Once the IMT established the criminality of aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, subsequent trials could determine the guilt of other Nazi officials and military leaders accused of those crimes. In these cases, later known as Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, defendants represented many segments of German society, from jurists and politicians to physicians, businessmen, collaborators and army officers.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to materials on the Nuremberg Trial, or International Military Tribunal, held between October 18, 1945 and October 1, 1946, that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Trial Proceedings and Judgments

Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946. Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1995. (JX 5437.3 .I58 1995) [ Find in a library near you]

Comprehensive forty-two volume set of documents and testimony from the first war crimes trial at Nuremberg. Commonly known as the Blue Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1996. (Reference JX 5437.3 .U65 1996) [ Find in a library near you]

Eight-volume set of the decision of the International Military Tribunal against the defendants at Nuremberg. Summarizes the crimes for which the defendants were put on trial and explains the Court's decision against each defendant. Includes the dissenting verdicts and the sentences handed down to the criminals. Also known as the Red Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

General Histories

Kahn, Leo. Nuremberg Trials. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (D 804 .G42 K343 1972) [ Find in a library near you]

Historical overview of the Nuremberg trials extensively illustrated with black and white photographs. Part of Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

Personal Accounts and Memoirs

Primary Sources and Documentation

Bard, Mitchell, editor. The Nuremberg Trial. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2002. (KZ 1176 .N87 2002) [ Find in a library near you]

Presents translated excerpts of primary source documentation from all aspects of the IMT, including preparation for the trial, the prosecution arguments, and the verdicts. Part of the History Firsthand series.

Film and Video

Aftermath: WWII Documentary Collection [videorecording]. [S.l.]: VCI Home Video, 1998. (Video Collection) [ Find in a library near you]

Collection of documentary films produced by the United States Department of the Army. The film Nuremberg combines historical footage of film actually shown as evidence against the defendants and interweaves the trial sequences to match the four counts of the indictments. The other three parts of this collection include Nazi Concentration Camps, We All Came Home, and Reunion.

Museum Web Resources

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the subject file labeled Nuremberg Trials (International Military Tribunal) containing newspaper and periodical articles.

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on the Nuremberg trials or related topics, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations. Ask a librarian for assistance in using subject headings to help with your research.

International Military Tribunal

Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946

See all Bibliographies

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On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

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Nazi camps were made to hold Jews and other people in them where they would eventually kill them

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The Nazis used a variety of camps throughout their time in power to persecute, control and, eventually, murder their opponents.

This section will explain the different types of camps used at different points by the Nazis.

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The Nazis used a variety of camps throughout their time in power to persecute, control and, eventually, murder their opponents. This section will explain the different types of camps used at different points by the Nazis.

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The Nazi Germany Rounded up Jews and members of other groups and had them all in a confined area. At the end of the World War 2 the camp prisoners was forced to leave.

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A death march was the march that prisoners marched when they marched to their death.

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As Soviet troops approach, SS units begin the final evacuation of prisoners from the Auschwitz camp complex, marching them on foot toward the interior of the German Reich. These forced evacuations come to be called " death marches."

In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march either northwest for 55 kilometers (approximately 30 miles) to Gliwice (Gleiwitz), joined by prisoners from subcamps in East Upper Silesia, such as Bismarckhuette, Althammer, and Hindenburg, or due west for 63 kilometers (approximately 35 miles) to Wodzislaw (Loslau) in the western part of Upper Silesia, joined by inmates from the subcamps to the south of Auschwitz, such as Jawischowitz, Tschechowitz, and Golleschau. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. At least 3,000 prisoners died on route to Gliwice alone; possibly as many as 15,000 prisoners died during the evacuation marches from Auschwitz and the subcamps.

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January 17, 1945. On this date, SS units evacuated prisoners from the Auschwitz camp complex as Soviet forces approached.

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On, October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trail in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

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Introduction

On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

The International Military Tribunal (IMT) delivered its judgment against the Nazi leaders on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years, and three were acquitted.

Once the IMT established the criminality of aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, subsequent trials could determine the guilt of other Nazi officials and military leaders accused of those crimes. In these cases, later known as Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, defendants represented many segments of German society, from jurists and politicians to physicians, businessmen, collaborators and army officers.

The following bibliography was compiled to guide readers to materials on the Nuremberg Trial, or International Military Tribunal, held between October 18, 1945 and October 1, 1946, that are in the Library's collection. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Annotations are provided to help the user determine the item's focus, and call numbers for the Museum's Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public library or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Follow the "Find in a library near you" link in each citation and enter your zip code at the Open WorldCat search screen. The results of that search indicate all libraries in your area that own that particular title. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.

Trial Proceedings and Judgments

Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946. Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1995. (JX 5437.3 .I58 1995) [ Find in a library near you]

Comprehensive forty-two volume set of documents and testimony from the first war crimes trial at Nuremberg. Commonly known as the Blue Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1996. (Reference JX 5437.3 .U65 1996) [ Find in a library near you]

Eight-volume set of the decision of the International Military Tribunal against the defendants at Nuremberg. Summarizes the crimes for which the defendants were put on trial and explains the Court's decision against each defendant. Includes the dissenting verdicts and the sentences handed down to the criminals. Also known as the Red Series. Available online at the Library of Congress Military Legal Resources Web site.

General Histories

Kahn, Leo. Nuremberg Trials. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (D 804 .G42 K343 1972) [ Find in a library near you]

Historical overview of the Nuremberg trials extensively illustrated with black and white photographs. Part of Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century series.

Personal Accounts and Memoirs

Primary Sources and Documentation

Bard, Mitchell, editor. The Nuremberg Trial. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2002. (KZ 1176 .N87 2002) [ Find in a library near you]

Presents translated excerpts of primary source documentation from all aspects of the IMT, including preparation for the trial, the prosecution arguments, and the verdicts. Part of the History Firsthand series.

Film and Video

Aftermath: WWII Documentary Collection [videorecording]. [S.l.]: VCI Home Video, 1998. (Video Collection) [ Find in a library near you]

Collection of documentary films produced by the United States Department of the Army. The film Nuremberg combines historical footage of film actually shown as evidence against the defendants and interweaves the trial sequences to match the four counts of the indictments. The other three parts of this collection include Nazi Concentration Camps, We All Came Home, and Reunion.

Museum Web Resources

Additional Resources

Subject Files

Ask at the reference desk to see the subject file labeled Nuremberg Trials (International Military Tribunal) containing newspaper and periodical articles.

Subject Headings

To search library catalogs or other electronic search tools for materials on the Nuremberg trials or related topics, use the following Library of Congress subject headings to retrieve the most relevant citations. Ask a librarian for assistance in using subject headings to help with your research.

International Military Tribunal

Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946

See all Bibliographies

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On October 18, 1945, twenty-two of Nazi Germany's political, military, and economic leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. For the first time in history an international tribunal composed of the Allied countries and representatives of Nazi-occupied countries would punish the leaders of a regime and an army who were responsible for crimes committed.

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Anti-Semitism is showing hate and rudeness against jews. https://www.state.gov/defining-anti-semitism/

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The Department of State has used a working definition, along with examples, of anti-Semitism since 2010. On May 26, 2016, the 31 member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), of which the United States is a member, adopted a non-legally binding "working definition" of anti-Semitism at its plenary in Bucharest. This definition is consistent with and builds upon the information contained in the 2010 State Department definition. As a member of IHRA, the United States now uses this working definition and has encouraged other governments and international organizations to use it as well.
Bucharest, 26 May 2016
In the spirit of the Stockholm Declaration that states: "With humanity still scarred by ...antisemitism and xenophobia the international community shares a solemn responsibility to fight those evils" the committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial called the IHRA Plenary in Budapest 2015 to adopt the following working definition of antisemitism.

On 26 May 2016, the Plenary in Bucharest decided to:

Adopt the following non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism :

"Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples may serve as illustrations:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for "why things go wrong." It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.

Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective - such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of antisemitic materials in some countries).

Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether they are people or property - such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries - are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or linked to Jews.

Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.

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Defining Anti-Semitism - United States Department of State

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The Department of State has used a working definition, along with examples, of anti-Semitism since 2010. On May 26, 2016, the 31 member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), of which the United States is a member, adopted a non-legally binding "working definition" of anti-Semitism at its plenary in Bucharest.

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Ghettos where what nazi's used to seperate Jews, so they would put them in small, and dirty areas called Ghettos

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ghettos

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Origin of the Term "Ghetto"

The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, Italy. Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live in the quarter, which was established in 1516. In the 16th and 17th centuries, officials ranging from local authorities to the Austrian emperor ordered the creation of ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome, Prague, and other cities.

Ghettos during World War II

During World War II, the SS and other German occupation authorities concentrated urban and sometimes regional Jewish populations in ghettos. Living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. The Germans established at least 1,143 ghettos in the occupied eastern territories. There were three types of ghettos:

closed ghettos

open ghettos

destruction ghettos

German occupation authorities established the first ghetto in occupied Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski in October 1939. The largest ghetto in occupied Poland was the Warsaw ghetto. In Warsaw, more than 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.

The Germans ordered Jews in the ghettos to wear identifying badges or armbands. They also required many Jews to carry out forced labor for the German Reich. Nazi-appointed Jewish councils ( Judenraete) administered daily life in the ghettos. A ghetto police force enforced the orders of the German authorities and the ordinances of the Jewish councils. This included facilitating deportations to killing centers. Jewish police officials, like Jewish council members, served at the whim of the German authorities. The Germans did not hesitate to kill those Jewish policemen who were perceived to have failed to carry out orders.

Ghettos and the "Final Solution"

In many places, ghettoization lasted a short time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days. Others lasted for months or years. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population.

With the implementation of the " Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them. Jews were deported to killing centers. German SS and police authorities also deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.

In August 1944, German SS and police completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz.

Resistance in the Ghettos

Jews responded with a variety of resistance efforts. Ghetto residents frequently smuggled food, medicine, weapons, or intelligence across the ghetto walls. These and other such activities often took place without the knowledge or approval of the Jewish councils. On the other hand, some Jewish councils and some individual council members tolerated or encouraged the smuggling because the goods were necessary to keep ghetto residents alive.

The Germans generally showed little concern in principle about religious worship, attendance at cultural events, or participation in youth movements inside the ghetto walls. However, they often saw a "security threat" in any social gathering and would move ruthlessly to incarcerate or kill perceived ringleaders and participants. The Germans generally forbade any form of consistent schooling or education.

In the very beginning, my mother and several other women organized a clandestine school for children who were below the age of work, and it was a wonderful thing because we had something to look forward to
- Charlene Schiff

In some ghettos, members of Jewish resistance movements staged armed uprisings. The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943. There were also violent revolts in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and several smaller ghettos.

Ghettos in Hungary

In Hungary, ghettoization did not begin until the spring of 1944 after the German invasion and occupation. In less than three months, the Hungarian gendarmerie, coordinating with German deportation experts from the Reich Main Office for Security, concentrated nearly 440,000 Jews from all over Hungary except for the capital city, Budapest. They forced the Jews into short-term "destruction ghettos" and then deported them into German custody at the Hungarian border. The Germans deported most of the Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

In Budapest, Hungarian authorities required Jews to confine themselves to marked houses (so-called Star of David houses). On October 15, 1944, leaders of the fascist Arrow Cross movement seized power in a German-sponsored coup. A few weeks later, the Arrow Cross government formally established a ghetto in Budapest. About 63,000 Jews lived in this 0.1 square mile area. Approximately 25,000 Jews who carried certificates indicating they were under the protection of a neutral power were confined in an "international ghetto" in the city. In January 1945, Soviet forces liberated that part of Budapest in which the two ghettos were located and liberated the nearly 90,000 Jewish residents.

Last Edited: Dec 4, 2019

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Ghettos separating Jews from the rest of the population were part of the Nazi plan to destroy Europe's Jews. Read about ghettoization during the Holocaust.

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Nazi Camps, where a concetration camp, which Jews would be treated poorly, tortured, rarely feed, and even murdered.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camps

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Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.

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Death Marches were when Nazi's would evacuate Jews, just for them to most likely end up killed.

https://www.commonlit.org/texts/death-marches-in-the-holocaust

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A massive Soviet 1944 summer offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center[1] and permitted Soviet forces to overrun the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS[2] chief (Reichsfuehrer SS) Heinrich Himmler[3] ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be evacuated toward the interior of the Reich.[4] Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the evacuation of Majdanek. Soviet and western media widely publicized SS atrocities[5] at the camp, using both footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving prisoners. The evacuations of the concentration camps had three purposes:

(1) SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to Allied and Soviet liberators;

(2) the SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments[6] wherever possible;

(3) some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime. Q1

In the summer and early autumn months of 1944, most of the evacuations were carried out by train or, in the case of German positions cut off in the Baltic States,[7] by ship. As winter approached, however, and the Allies reached the German borders and assumed full control of German skies, SS authorities increasingly evacuated concentration camp prisoners from both east and west on foot.

By January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. Most of German East Prussia was already under Soviet occupation. Soviet forces besieged Warsaw, Poland and Budapest, Hungary as they prepared to push German forces back toward the interior of the Reich. After the failure of the surprise German Ardennes[8] offensive in December 1944, Anglo-American[9] forces in the west were ready to invade Germany.

The SS guards had strict orders to kill prisoners who could no longer walk or travel. As evacuations depended increasingly on forced marches and travel by open rail car or small craft in the Baltic Sea in the brutal winter of 1944-1945, the number who died of exhaustion and exposure along the routes increased dramatically. This encouraged an understandable perception among the prisoners that the Germans intended them all to die on the march. The term death march was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners. Q2

During these death marches, the SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following their explicit orders, they shot hundreds of prisoners who collapsed or could not keep pace on the march, or who could no longer disembark from the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced marches were especially common in late 1944 and 1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to camps deeper within Germany. Major evacuation operations moved prisoners out of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Gross-Rosen westward to Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in winter 1944-1945; from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg to Dachau and Mauthausen in spring 1945; and from Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme northwards to the Baltic Sea in the last weeks of the war.

As Allied forces advanced into the heart of Germany they liberated hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. This included thousands of prisoners whom Allied and Soviet troops liberated while they marched on the forced evacuations. On April 25, 1945, Soviet forces met US forces at Torgau, on the Elbe River in central Germany. The German armed forces surrendered unconditionally[10] in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945. May 8, 1945, was proclaimed Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).

To almost the last day of the war, German authorities marched prisoners to various locations in the Reich. As late as May 1, 1945, prisoners who had been evacuated from Neuengamme to the North Sea coastline were loaded onto ships; hundreds of them died when the British bombed the ships a few days later, thinking that they carried German military personnel. Q3

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CommonLit | Death Marches in the Holocaust

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During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany confined Jews and other so-called "racially undesired elements" of German society to concentration camps. Towards the end of the war, concentration camp prisoners were evacuated, often on foot. The grueling marches that followed became known as "death marches."

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Nurembeg Trials was to charge the Nazis for everything that they have done to Jews, Hitler commited suicide before being brought in.

https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Nuremberg_trials.html

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nuremberg trials military legal resources federal research center custom research analytical service foreign domestic topic cost recovery library congress

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Nuremberg Trials: The Library of Congress -- through the Federal Research Division -- provides customized research and analytical services on foreign and domestic topics to United States Government and District of Columbia agencies on a cost-recovery basis.