Nazi Persecution of the Jews

· German propaganda attempted to vilify the Jews in Europe as enemies of the German people

· Nazi propaganda called them cockroaches, which infest German society, evil and impure who need to be exterminated

· Anti Semitic laws were passed by Hitler

o Every German must boycott Jewish businesses

o Jewish children will be excluded from public school

o Marriage is forbidden between Jews and non-Jews

o Jewish properties and savings will be confiscated

o Jews will be beaten, degraded and transported by rail to re-settlement areas

· Many Jews after 1938 were taken to holding compounds in bombed out cities in Poland (Warsaw) known as gettos

· Systematically, Jewish men, women and children would be transported to remote areas to be shot and buried in mass graves

· This method was considered too slow, messy and wasteful, therefore death camps were constructed with slave labour where 1000’s could be murdered faster and more efficiently

· Some popular death camps were:

o Dachau – Germany

o Auschwitz – Poland

· Jewish prisoners would arrive by train and the families would be separated based on gender, age and health

· Almost immediately, old men, women and children would be taken to a compound, stripped naked, given a towel and a bar of soap

· 200 -300 at a time would enter what appeared to be a large public shower room. Within minutes the doors were sealed shut and Zyklon B – chlorine gas – was delivered into the room through the shower heads

· 10 -15 minutes later the tangle of bodies are carried by prisoners out the back door, piled on flat railway cars and transported directly to crematoriums for burning

· Every death camp was under strict orders to recycle everything:

o Human hair

o Gold and silver fillings from teeth

o Clothes

o Boots

o Glasses

o Tattooed skin (used as lamp shades and blinds)

o Human fat, which was mixed with ashes to make soap

· This process was known as the final solution and in this way more than 6.5 million Jewish people were terrorized and murdered

· Those Nazis responsible for these atrocities, including sadistic medical experiments, would be caught, tried and most were executed. Some managed to escape capture and emigrated to South America, the USA and Canada