Matthew Williford Williford 1

Mrs. Worthington

Reading 5P

May 6, 2011 25 Fact Sheet

25 Fact Sheet
Holocaust

Holocaust facts

1. The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. It ended in 1945
when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.
2. The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by
fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew
word "Shoah," which means "devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide.
3. In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the
disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered.
4. The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National
Socialist German Worker's Party").
5. The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people.
That is horrible.

The Big Numbers

6. It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were
Jews.
7. The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe.
8. An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered in the Holocaust.

Persecution Begins
 9. On April 1, 1933, the Nazis instigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a
boycott of all Jewish-run businesses.
10. The Nuremberg Laws, issued on September 15, 1935, began to exclude Jews from public life.
The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law
that prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans. The Nuremberg
Laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation.
11. Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of
these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired them from civil service jobs (i.e.
government jobs), made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from
working on anyone other than Jewish patients.
12. During the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazis incited a pogrom against Jews in Austria and
Germany in what has been termed, "Kristallnacht" ("Night of Broken Glass"). This night of
violence included the pillaging and burning of synagogues, breaking the windows of Jewish-
owned businesses, the looting of these stores, and many Jews were physically attacked. Also,
approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
13. After World War II started in 1939, the Nazis began ordering Jews to wear a yellow Star of David
on their clothing so that Jews could be easily recognized and targeted.

Ghettos

14. After the beginning of World War II, Nazis began ordering all Jews to live within certain, very
specific, areas of big cities, called ghettos.
15. Jews were forced out of their homes and moved into smaller apartments, often shared with
other families.
16. Some ghettos started out as "open," which meant that Jews could leave the area during the
daytime but often had to be back within the ghetto by a curfew. Later, all ghettos became
"closed," which meant that Jews were trapped within the confines of the ghetto and not
allowed to leave.
17. A few of the major ghettos were located in the cities of Bialystok, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Riga,
Vilna, and Warsaw.
18. The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, with its highest population reaching 445,000 in March 1941.
19. In most ghettos, Nazis ordered the Jews to establish a Judenrat (a Jewish council) to both
administer Nazi demands and to regulate the internal life of the ghetto.
20. Nazis would then order deportations from the ghettos. In some of the large ghettos, 1,000
people per day were loaded up in trains and sent to either a concentration camp or a death
camp.
21. To get them to cooperate, the Nazis told the Jews they were being transported to another place
for labor,
 22. When the Nazis decided to kill the remaining Jews in a ghetto, they would "liquidate" a ghetto
by boarding the last Jews in the ghetto on trains.
23. When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto on April 13, 1943, the remaining
Jews fought back in what has become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jewish
resistance fighters held out against the entire Nazi regime for 28 days -- longer than many
European countries had been able to withstand Nazi conquest.

Concentration and Extermination Camps

24. Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as "concentration camps," there were actually a
number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor
camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps. (Map)
25. One of the first concentration camps was Dachau, which opened on March 20, 1933.
26. From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners
(i.e. people who spoke or acted in some way against Hitler or the Nazis) and people the Nazis
labeled as "asocial."
27. After Kristallnacht in 1938, the persecution of Jews became more organized. This led to the
exponential increase in the number of Jews sent to concentration camps.
28. Life within Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical
labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk
(no mattress or pillow). Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were
frequent.
29. At a number of Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on
prisoners against their will.
30. While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination
camps (also known as death camps) were built for the sole purpose of killing large groups of
people quickly and efficiently.
31. The Nazis built six extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and
Majdanek. (Auschwitz and Majdanek were both concentration and extermination camps.)
32. Prisoners transported to these extermination camps were told to undress to take a shower.
Rather than a shower, the prisoners were herded into gas chambers and killed. (At Chelmno, the
prisoners were herded into gas vans instead of gas chambers.)
33. Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. It is estimated that 1.1
million people were killed at Auschwitz.