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Nazi policies towards Jews - Coggle Diagram
Nazi policies towards Jews
General
During the 1930s, life for Jews became very difficult
Their civil right in germany gradually became stripped away from them each year
By 1932, the Nazi policy of persecution against Jews turned to a policy of genocide
Ghettos
The Germans began the Ghettoisation of Jews
All Jews were forced to move into ghettos in Poland
GHETTO: A walled area of a city or town which is restricted only for certain ethnicities or races
The Jews were crammed into poor, crowded housing
Food was restricted, and starvation was very common
Diseases spread very quickly (Typhus was the most common)
Walls surrounding the ghettos were near impossible to escape, as they were 3.5 meters tall, along with having barbed wires and shattered glass covering the top
Walls were built by the Germans, but Jews still had to pay for them
Between 1941-42, around 4000 jews died each month in these ghettoes
Death squads
In June 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet union.
They conquered a large part of West Soviet Union, causing hundreds of thousands of Jews to fall in the hands of the Nazis
Hitler organised Einstatzgrupen, along wwith the German army, to shoot all thse Jews
These groups would roudnd up groups of Jewish women, men and children, slavs and gypsies one by one and coonfiscate their belongings
The groups were forced to remove all their clothing and then march along fields in the outskirts of cities, where they would all be shot and thrown into graves
The Einstatzgruppen killed around 1.2 civilians in 2 years
The final solution
In July 1941, the Nazis came up with the Final solution to the Jewish problem
Concentration camps were built all around Poland, where Jews would be sent to carry out forced labour
However, 1 year later in 1942, the Jews decided to turn some of these into extermination camps, where Jews would be killed in large masses
Over the course of WW2, 6 million Jews coming from Eastern Europe were killed here. This became known as the Holocaust
On top of the 6 million Jews, Hitler also killed 5 million non jews (slavs, gypsies, disabled people, members of the LGBTQ, black people)
When sent to these camps, Jews would be separated into two groups
A. People who were fit and healthy enough to work
B. People who were not fit enough to work labour
The poeple who could work would be forced to do labour day and night. Some were put for human experiments. When this group of people became too weak to crarry out their jobs, they were then killed
People who could not undergo labour would be killed instantly
Instead of putting death squads to shoot people group by group, the Nazis built gas chambers, which were large showers where 2000 people would be put into and gassed
The Nazis used a chemical called Zyclon B, which was a derivative of cyanide. When released into the showers, the humidity would cause it to vaporise it and turn into Hydrogen Cyanide. This is a poisonous gas which shut down cellular respiration.
After everyone died, prisoners at the concentration camps would carry the bodies out and place them in large ovens where the bodies would be cremated.
Keeping the final solution a secret
the mass killing of Jews had to be a secret, as countries and people from Germany would interfere if they really know what was happening in the camps
So, propaganda films were shot of inside concentration camps, showing the prisoners doing light labour and being treated well.
This not only kept German people from revolting, but also fooled German leaders to send Jews to the camps
However, the Jews in Poland eventually figured out what was going o, so they revolted for a month in 1943.
When the Germans started losing the war, they started covering up railway lines that led to Auschwitz, and destroyed video and text records of the camps