The Holocaust - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Holocaust

How Did It End?Slide2

Approaching Defeat

With the Soviets rapidly approaching from the East and the Allies from the West, the Nazis began moving Jews to concentration camps in Germany

The Nazis then began destroying their extermination camps in hopes that the mass killings they conducted would not be discovered by the Allies

Before the dismantling of their concentration camps, however, the Nazis rapidly began exterminating Jews at extremely high rates. It is believed that half of the deaths carried out in concentration camps happened in the last yearSlide3

Death Marches

In the Summer of 1944, the Nazis began evacuating their extermination camps in what would be known as “death marches”

The Nazis thought that marching Jewish prisoners to Germany would be useful for three reasons

If they were caught by the Allies, the atrocities of the camps would be exposed to the world

The Germans were still in denial about losing the war and needed the Jews to create armaments

Some Nazi leaders such as Himmler, felt that the prisoners could be used to bargain with the Allies if they lost the WarAround 60,000 prisoners died on these marchesSlide4

Liberation

On January 1945, the Soviets liberated the Nazis biggest camp, AuschwitzOnly a few thousand Jews remained as the rest had been killed on “Death Marches”

The British and Americans liberated camps in Northern Germany while the Soviets freed the rest

Thousands of liberated Jews would die within weeks due to malnutritionSlide5

What Did the Liberators Think?

“Of all the horrors of the place, the smell, perhaps, was the most startling of all. It was a smell make up of all kinds of odors –human excreta, foul bodily odors, smoldering trash fires, German tobacco — which is a stink in itself — all mixed together in a heavy dank atmosphere, in a thick muddy woods, where little breeze could go

.”

-Captain J.D.

PletcherSlide6

What Did the Liberators Think?

“These Jewish people and these Polish people were like animals. They were so degraded, there was no goodness, no kindness, nothing of that nature, there was no sharing. If they got a piece of something to eat, they grabbed it and ran away in a corner and fought off anyone who came near them

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- Samuel Glashow

“[The prisoners] were so thin they didn’t have anything didn’t have any buttocks to lie on; there wasn’t any flesh on their arms to rest their skulls on…one man that I saw there who had died on his knees with his arms and head in a praying position and he was still there, apparently had been for days

-William B LoveladySlide7

What Happened to the Survivors?

The Holocaust left tens of thousands of homeless Jews in Europe many of which feared to return home

In some places such as Poland

Antisemitism

was still strong and violence against them continuedMany of the survivors emigrated to Western Europe and North America, yet many of these countries had a limit on how many they could takeWith the creation of Israel in 1953, a massive number of survivors had a place to call home (170,000+)Slide8

Aftermath of the Holocaust

A number of Nazi commanders involved with the Holocaust had international trials and were convicted guilty.Many Nazis managed to escape and have been arrested throughout the years. Recently, a 93 year old man was convicted in Germany in May of 2014

While the Holocaust was not the reason for the creation of the nation of Israel, it gave the creation of the country international attention and support