CHAPTER 13
SECTION 3
The Holocaust
THE NUREMBERG LAWS
• During WWII the Nazis killed
millions of people they considered
inferior including more than 6
million Jews.
• The Hebrew term for the
holocaust is “shoah” which
means catastrophe.
• Nazis targeted political opponents,
Jews, homosexuals, gypsies,
Slavs, and the disabled.
THE NUREMBERG LAWS
• After Nazis took control of
Germany, they passed the
Nuremberg Laws which:
• Took citizenship away from Jews
• Prohibited Jews from owning
land
• Banned marriage between Jews
and Germans
• Barred Jews from voting
• Many Jews were forced to live in
ghettos
KRISTALLNACHT
• November 7th, 1938 a Jewish refugee
shot and killed a German diplomat in
Paris.
• The man wanted revenge for
persecution against his and other
Jewish families by the Nazis.
• Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda,
Joseph Goebbels, used the incident
to incite public riots against Jews.
• The night of violence against Jews
that erupted in Germany and Austria
became known as Kristallnacht or
‘night of broken glass’.
JEWISH REFUGEES
• The Gestapo, Germany’s secret
police, began rounding up thousands
of Jews and ordered them to leave the
country.
• Many tried to leave Germany, but
many countries had strict immigration
laws and would not take very many at
a time.
• Germany also allowed Jews to take no
more than $4 with them if they left the
country.
• It was not enough to cover the cost
of starting a new life.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
• In 1942, Nazi leaders met at the
Wannsee Conference to determine the
“final solution of the Jewish question.”
• They agreed to round up Jews in all
Nazi occupied territories and send them
to concentration camps to provide
slave labor for as long as they
remained alive.
• Those who could not provide slave
labor, would be sent to extermination
camps to be executed in gas
chambers.