The Holocaust

Background

-Hitler had started sending Jews, others to concentration camps as early as 1933

-Background

-Hitler wanted to create Aryan race

-Hitler shipped out Jews from Germany to get rid of them

-Needed strong Germans to for pure race

-Get rid of those who are dragging you down

-Passed laws to sterilize men and women

-This program was forerunner to “Final Solution”

-Euthanasia = "mercy killing”, “dying with dignity”

-Get rid of “unfit” Germans

-Old, handicapped (took up space, wasted food)

-Some doctors were too eager to help out

-Lab rats

-When word got outàpeople furious

-Hitler stops program until 1941

-The Euthanasia program killed 250K Germans!

-Kept pretty much a secret

-Concentration Camps

-NOT death camps

-Semi-secret

-Jews, criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals, gypsies were sent there

-POWs sent after WWII began

-People used for labor

-Slave labor

-Worked them to death (literally)

-Anywhere from 1000-2000 concentration camps

-Death camps

-6 camps built especially for killings

-Had satellite branches, also

-At first, prisoners were shot and put in mass graves

-Took too long; wasted bullets

-Gas chambers

-Very efficient killing method

-12K were killed and cremated per day at Auschwitz

-Prisoners used as science experiments