THE HOLOCAUST LEARNING FROM PEOPLE WHO WERE IMPRISONED AND WHAT WE MUST REMEMBER TODAY
27th January 1945
Image Credits CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/c8kYd3 Konzentrationlager by Yam Amir
Tiziana
Angiolini
English Language Teacher
A POEM ABOU OU THE TH EXPERIENCE IENCE ON THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS Reading comprehension comprehen activity
Image credit by Tiziana Angiolini Read the poem and think about the images that come to your mind as regards what you already already know about the concentration camps and the Holocaust Search the web and look for information about the words " Shoah" and " Holocaust"
HISTORY OF GERMANY When we think about the Holocaust we usually associate it to the Jewish people and their persecutions in Europe in the years after the First World War. But there had been many other events that had led these people to leave their countries many years before Hitler came to power in Germany. In Europe many Jews were forced to live in ghettos and were forbidden to live their life in some parts of the cities and towns. Shakespeare depicted the image of a Jew in Italy in "The Merchant of Venice", and in this play we can see how the Jews had difficulties in living in Europe, they made profits by lending money to the Christians but they lived in a community that was segregated and isolated and where they were hated by most of the Christian people. The term Holocaust refers to the tragedies in the concentration camps and the murder of many people before the Third Reich collapsed . Many of them were Jews and there were people who had fought against the political system and the dictatorship of Hitler , some were also Christian people, others were hated because they belonged to minorities or were disabled. The great tragedy of the Holocaust was the tragedy of a period in which the Nazis had believed they could conquer the world. Which events caused the beginning of the dictatorship in Germany and the sad events of the Final Solution?
We must learn about how the Germans were humiliated at the end of WW1 and how the dissolution of the old central empires had changed the status quo in Europe. The end of WW1 marked the beginning of new states, Germany and Austria were two republics but in Germany the years that are known as the years of the Weimar Republic were the years in which Hitler started to get support from people who had great difficulties and thought that they should send the Jews out of Germany. 1918-1933 The End of the War and the beginning of the Republic in Germany: years of great depression and inflation and deflation and economic problems The years were sad for many German families who could not cope with the many economic difficulties that their country was facing. Hitler took advantage of the situation and in his book " Mein Kamp" which was published in 1925 he described the Jews as victorious over other peoples. He was able to build a political party- the National Socialist German Workers Party -that was appealing to all the Germans who were looking for a solution for their problems. They wanted to get rid of the Jews. 1929 : the Fall of Wall Street market. The crash was the beginning of crisis that is known as Great Depression in the
USA but made the situation of Germany worse with millions of people who were poor, unemployed and a lot of men who had been soldiers during WW1 had no job opportunities. The party became more and more important and in November 1932 it obtained more than 33% of the support. This election marked the end of Democracy but Hitler became a Chancellor within a democratic system as he was the supported by other political leaders who were moderate and were afraid of the socialist revolution after the events which had changed Russia in 1917. 1933: Germany becomes Nazi Germany 1933: new elections and the Parliament is set on fire and the Communists were considered to be responsible for the event. It is the end of Democracy and people lost their freedom rights. There was an only party, people were living a life under the control of the Nazis. 1933: in May Nazi books burning How Germany changed under the Nazis Concentration camps to terrorize people Hitler decided that the opponents should be put into concentration camps, so the camps were used a tool where they had to keep the people who were not supporting his system.
1935 Nurenberg Laws define the Jews legally The Jewish badge was instituted (1)
4 Year Plan
starting in 1936
• • • •
military industry to be ready to start a war creation of millions of jobs people working in concentration camps no freedom but more social securities were given to the Germans • German Jews were forced to leave the country but not everybody could go away and leave Europe and Germany 1938 Austria Anschluss 1938 Anti -Jewish measures 1938 Evian Conference Almost every single country of the world refused to take in Jewish refugees from the Reich.
1938 Kristallnach (November) 1939 Establishment of the Greater Reich
All these events show us how the great machine of war was working in order to make Germany become the
leading nation and this explains why the conditions of the Jews worsened. This was true for Poland and the new lands conquered in the east which the German soldiers had occupied. The war continued and expanded and more people were murdered. In 1942 Hitler said "The more we render the Jew incapable of harming us, the more we shall protect ourselves from this danger." These words led to tragic events of the Final Solution. More people and Jews were murdered in the camps, they were gassed while others were killed in the eastern parts of Europe when the Nazis were conquering these lands. The concentration camps became territories of death where children and families were sent to die. Some were destroyed by the Germans before the war ended but survivors could tell us what they had seen and experienced there. VIDEO ACTIVITY MEET THE SURVIVORS Watch these videos online: • Sam Pivnik, author of Survivor, returns to Auschwitz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ_GDGYWLY
• Lily Ebert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muTyt8VIi9c Over to you: what is the message they have for us today?
References (1) Information about the Jewish badge http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/yellowstar.htm
Information online and for this leaflet Videos about the Survivols https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ_GDGYWLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muTyt8VIi9c Information from courses which I did online The Holocaust : Mooc course part 1 and part 2 by FutureLearn in 2015 Other sources http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/holo.html http://www.ushmm.org/learn
This work is part of a teaching unit about "The Holocaust" aimed at students of English aged 17-18 by Tiziana Angiolini - English Language Teacher from Italy January 2016