LibGuides: World War II: Phases of the Holocaust and World War II

The Holocaust Encyclopaedia at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has 2 versions of the timeline of The Holocaust and WWII - the key dates version can be found HERE; the more detailed version can be found HERE.

Timeline of anti-Jewish decrees
The Nazis established many new anti-Jewish laws. This links to a chart showing a small selection of the 2,000 Nazi anti-Jewish decrees passed between 1933-1945.

Exploring the rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and the spread of Nazi control across Europe, this programme looks at how and why the Jewish people went from being distrusted and blamed for Germany’s ills, to being violently vilified through events such as Kristallnacht, to finally being rounded up for mass extermination. Intended for viewing by audiences from middle secondary and older, this background to the Holocaust will help students to contextualise one of the worst atrocities in human history.

Stages of the Holocaust

Scholar Doris Bergen describes the phases of events that led to the Holocaust.

Six stages of the Holocaust
The resource describes the 6 key phases of the Holocaust - Definition, isolation, emigration, ghettoisation, deportation, and mass murder.

Nuremburg Laws

"In their effort to reshape the “national community” according to their racial ideals, the Nazis enacted hundreds of laws, policies, and decrees. Nearly 1,500 of the Nazis’ laws, policies, and decrees enacted between 1933 and 1939 were designed to remove Jews from the country’s political, economic, and cultural life. Among the most significant of these were the Nuremberg Laws. This set of laws included the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, both announced at the Nuremberg Party Rally on September 15, 1935, and an additional decree called the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law, announced on November 14, 1935.

The Nuremberg Laws turned Jews from German citizens into “residents of Germany.” The laws transformed the lives of Jews all over Germany, including thousands of people who had not previously known that their families had Jewish heritage."

Source: Facing History

Economic discrimination

A wave of discrimination
"A wave of discriminatory actions were taken across Germany in order to “purify Germany of the Jewish spirit” after the Nazis took power. In 1933, 316 anti-Jewish measures were taken in Germany by the national, state, regional, and local governments as well as by civic associations throughout the country."
Economic competition - Poland
"A worldwide depression began in the 1920s and continued through much of the 1930s. A depression is a time when economic activity slows; more and more businesses decrease production and lay off workers. In a poor country like Poland, the effects were devastating for everyone, Christian and Jew alike. In big cities and small towns alike, it became harder and harder for Jews to find work. Belkhatov, located just south of Lodz, was typical of many places during those years. Although the town had a number of modern textile factories, they employed only Poles and ethnic Germans to run the huge mechanical looms. Jewish weavers in the town worked at home on hand looms. Unlike their counterparts in the factories, they received no benefits and earned no regular salary."

Warsaw Ghetto

A day in Warsaw
This short documentary captures the spirit of Jewish life in Warsaw, Poland, before World War II.
Warsaw
"In the fall of 1940, German authorities established a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland’s largest city with the largest Jewish population. Almost 30 percent of Warsaw’s population was packed into 2.4 percent of the city's area."

Map of the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940

Street scene in Warsaw ghetto

Stall of a street vendor selling old Hebrew books. Warsaw ghetto, Poland, February 1941.

Constructing the wall around the Warsaw ghetto

Forced laborers work on the construction of a wall around the Warsaw ghetto area. The Germans announced the construction of a ghetto in October 1940 and closed the ghetto off from the rest of Warsaw in mid-November 1940.

Jewish emigration

German-Jewish refugees 1933-1939
"In January 1933 there were some 523,000 Jews in Germany, representing less than 1 percent of the country's total population. The Jewish population was predominantly urban and approximately one-third of German Jews lived in Berlin. The initial response to the Nazi takeover was a substantial wave of emigration (37,000–38,000), much of it to neighboring European countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland). Other measures that spurred decisions to emigrate in the early years of Nazi rule were the dismissal of Jews from the civil service and the Nazi-sponsored boycott of Jewish-owned stores."

Map of Jewish emigration from Germany 1933-1940

"Between 1933 and 1939, Jews in Germany were subjected to arrest, economic boycott, the loss of civil rights and citizenship, incarceration in concentration camps, random violence, and the state-organized Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom. Jews reacted to Nazi persecution in a number of ways. Forcibly segregated from German society, German Jews turned to and expanded their own institutions and social organizations. However, in the face of increasing repression and physical violence, many Jews fled Germany. More Jews might have left Germany had such countries as the United States and Great Britain been more willing to admit them."

The Evian Conference
"US President Franklin Roosevelt called for an international conference in 1938 to discuss the growing Jewish refugee crisis intensified by the German takeover of Austria. The delegates expressed sympathy for the Jews who were seeking to flee Nazi persecution. Most countries, however, refused to admit more refugees."

Evian Conference cartoon 1938

Political cartoon entitled “Will the Evian conference guide him to freedom?” in The New York Times, July 3, 1938

Nazi summary of the Evian Conference
Summary of the outcomes from the Evian Conference and its ramifications for German-Jewish policy given by the Nazi intelligence and security body in July 1938.

Einsatzgruppen

Einsatzgruppen [Mobile Killing Units]
"The Einsatzgruppen (task forces, special action groups) were units of the Security Police and SD (the SS intelligence service) that followed the German army as it invaded and occupied countries in Europe. Often referred to as “mobile killing squads,” they are best known for their role in the systematic murder of Jews in mass shooting operations on Soviet territory."
Einsatzgruppen Report No. 101, October 2, 1941
"Reports by leaders of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were sent to the Nazi headquarters in Berlin about their activities in the East as they followed the advances of the German army. There were four Einsatzgruppen units. This report is dated October 2, 1941."

Nazi's definition of a Jew

Defining the enemy
"A key part of Nazi ideology was to define the enemy and those who posed a threat to the so-called “Aryan” race. Nazi propaganda was essential in promoting the myth of the “national community” and identifying who should be excluded. Jews were considered the main enemy."
1935: Key dates
Key dates leading up to the Nuremberg laws

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht
"On November 9–10, 1938, Nazi leaders unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish population in Germany and recently incorporated territories. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) because of the shattered glass that littered the streets after the vandalism and destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes."
World response to Kristallnacht
"The danger to Jews became even more dire on November 9–10, 1938, in what was called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)—the worst outbreak of terror and violence against Jews all over Germany since the Nazis came to power.
On that night, according to the Nazi propaganda, “the German people” spontaneously took revenge on the Jewish people for the murder of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan. In reality, the violence had been planned and organized by the Nazis, and carried out by the SS, SA, Hitler Youth, and other Nazi groups."
Accounts of Kristallnacht
Interviews giving first-hand accounts of Kristallnacht from Vienna residents.
(9 November 1938; English translations)

Deportations

Deportations
"In the months following the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime continued to carry out their plans for the "Final Solution." Jews were "deported"—transported by trains or trucks to six camps, all located in occupied Poland: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek-Lublin."
Deportation maps
"Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death."

The Wannsee Conference

View of the Wannsee Villa

On January 20, 1942, the villa was the site of the Wannsee Conference.

The Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"
"The "Final Solution" was the Nazis' code name for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction, or genocide, of all European Jews. The Nazis used the vague term "Final Solution" to hide their policy of mass murder from the rest of the world."

Distinction between death & concentration camps

Types of camps

This picture shows the barbed wire double fences at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz complex was a series of camps that included several different types of camps: a concentration camp, an extermination camp, and a forced labour camp.

Source: The Weiner Holocaust Library

Concentration camps
"Generally speaking, a concentration camp is a place where people are concentrated and imprisoned without trial. Inmates are usually exploited for their labour and kept under harsh conditions, though this is not always the case."

The watchtower at Dachau

Dachau was created in 1933 and was one of the first Nazi concentration camps.

Source: The Weiner Holocaust Library

Extermination camps
"Extermination camps were used by the Nazis from 1941 to 1945 to murder Jews and, on a smaller scale, Roma . To implement the ‘ Final Solution ’, the Nazis established six purpose-built extermination camps on Polish soil."

The crematorium at Majdanek Extermination Camp

Between its establishment in 1941 and its liberation in 1945, over 78,000 people were murdered at Majdanek.

Source: The Weiner Holocaust Library

Transit camps
"Transit camps were camps where prisoners were briefly detained prior to deportation to other Nazi camps."

Ruth Wiener

In 1943, Ruth Wiener was incarcerated in Westerbork transit camp and later Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her mother and two sisters.

Source: The Wiener Holocaust Library

Forced labour camps
"The Nazis started using forced labour shortly after their rise to power. They established specific Arbeitslager (labour camps) which housed Ostarbeiter (eastern workers), Fremdarbeiter (foreign workers) and other forced labourers who were forcibly rounded up and brought in from the east. These were separate from the SS-run concentration camps, where prisoners were also forced to perform labour."

This photograph shows a group of forced labourers at work in Kraków-Płaszów camp in German-occupied Poland.

Source: The Wiener Holocaust Library

Prisoner of war camps
"Allied military officers and personnel who were captured by, or surrendered to, the Nazis were also imprisoned in camps. These camps were called prisoner of war, or POW, camps. Over one thousand prisoner of war camps existed throughout the Third Reich during the Second World War."

Unused prisoner of war airmail letter

Typically, inmates in prisoner of war camps were allowed to send and receive letters from their families, although this process could take several weeks or months.

Source: The Wiener Holocaust Library