stages of the Holocaust

• Geschiedenis
• Middelbare school

Stage 1. Definition: 

Jews are defined as the “other” through legalized discrimination.

Key question: How did the Nazis define Jews as different and inferior?

Possible answers:

• Through racism: categorizing people into fixed categories based on (supposed) bloodlines.

• Through laws: The Nuremberg laws defined who was a Jew and who was not a Jew.

• Through propaganda: Cartoons, books, movies, and posters portrayed Jews as different from (and inferior to) their Aryan neighbors.

Stage 2. Isolation: 

Once individuals are labeled as Jews, they are separated from mainstream society

Key question: How did the Nazis isolate Jews?

Possible answers:

• Through laws: Jews were not allowed to attend German schools or universities.

They could not go to public parks or movie theatres. All German youth were obliged to join the Hitler Youth Movement; Jewish youth were excluded from

membership.

• Through social practices: Many Germans stopped associating or “being friends”

with Jews. Jews and non-Jewish Germans were not allowed to join the same clubs.

• Through the economy: Jews were excluded from the civil service and Jewish businesses were taken over by Germans. Jewish doctors and lawyers had their licenses taken away. This made it less likely for Germans to interact with Jews in their daily life.

Stage 3. Emigration: 

Jews are encouraged to leave Germany. With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the Nazis apply their racial laws to the countries they invade and occupy. Thus, Jews in these territories also tried to emigrate outside of the Third Reich.

Key question: How did the Nazis encourage the Jews to leave Germany and other occupied countries?

Possible answers:

• Through discriminatory laws: Many Jews, especially artists and academics, left

Germany when they were no longer allowed to work in the universities.

• Through new immigration laws: Jews were allowed to obtain exit visas so long as

they left behind their valuables and property.

• Through fear: Kristallnacht encouraged many Jews to leave the area.

Stage 4. Ghettoization: 

Jews are forcibly removed to segregated sections of Eastern European cities called ghettos

Key question: What are ghettos? What were the conditions like in these ghettos?

Possible answers:

• Ghettos were walled-off areas of a city where Jews were forced to live. They were

not allowed to leave their ghetto without permission from Nazi officials. Likewise,

except for Nazi officials, non-Jews were not allowed to enter the ghetto.

• Conditions in the ghettos were crowded and filthy. Many families were forced to

share one small apartment. There was limited access to proper waste disposal. Jews

had to give up their property and valuables. There were very few jobs in a ghetto

and since everyone had to give up their property and valuables, most of the residents were extremely poor. Food was scarce. Forced, unpaid labor was common.

Stage 5. Deportation:

 Jews are transported from ghettos to concentration camps and death camps.

Key questions: What is a concentration camp? What is a death camp? Who was affected by these camps?

Possible answers:

 The Nazis built the first concentration camp in 1933 as a place to detain (place-byforce) communists and other opponents to the Nazi Party. At the beginning of

World War II, the Nazis began building more concentration camps where they

could imprison “enemies of the state,” including Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, as

well as prisoners or war. Many concentration camps functioned as labor camps,

where inmates worked until they either starved to death or died of disease.

• Death camps, also called extermination camps, were designed for the purpose of

killing large numbers of people in the most efficient manner possible.

• Because these camps were located away from major cities, victims had to be transported to them via train. Some rides lasted for several days. Thousands of prisoners

died en route to the camps.

• Many people were affected by these camps. Of course, there were the victims; millions of children, women, and men suffered as inmates in this camps. But there

were also bureaucrats—the train conductors, prison guards, cooks, secretaries,

etc.—that made sure that millions of victims were transported to camps throughout

Europe and who ran the camps once the victims arrived.

Stage 6. Mass murder: 

It is estimated that the Nazis murdered approximately 11 million

innocent civilians during World War II. These are civilians killed not in the crossfire of

armed combat but murdered for being an “enemy of the state” or for belonging to an

undesirable group. The Nazis and those who worked for them killed children, women,

and men mostly through shooting, suffocation in gas chambers, and imprisonment in

labor and death camps. Conditions in the camps were such that many prisoners died

from disease, such as typhus, malnutrition, and exhaustion from overwork. Of those

killed, six million were Jews. Two-thirds of the entire European Jewish population was

killed by the Nazis. 

Possible answers:

 The Nazis built the first concentration camp in 1933 as a place to detain (place-byforce) communists and other opponents to the Nazi Party. At the beginning of

World War II, the Nazis began building more concentration camps where they

could imprison “enemies of the state,” including Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, as

well as prisoners or war. Many concentration camps functioned as labor camps,

where inmates worked until they either starved to death or died of disease.

• Death camps, also called extermination camps, were designed for the purpose of

killing large numbers of people in the most efficient manner possible.

• Because these camps were located away from major cities, victims had to be transported to them via train. Some rides lasted for several days. Thousands of prisoners

died en route to the camps.

• Many people were affected by these camps. Of course, there were the victims; millions of children, women, and men suffered as inmates in this camps. But there

were also bureaucrats—the train conductors, prison guards, cooks, secretaries,

etc.—that made sure that millions of victims were transported to camps throughout

Europe and who ran the camps once the victims arrived.