Continued with information on the Holocaust:
Who was killed in the Holocaust?: Jews (six million dead): Hitler believed that they were inferior to the "pure" German people, Gypsies (500,000 to 1.5 Million dead): Gypsies were travelers and would have sneaky ways of stealing from stores and other places, Mentally/physically handicapped people (75,000 to 250,000): Believed that they were weak and inferior, Soviet Slavs/POW's/Troops (16.5 million), Poles (2.5 million), Homosexuals (5-15 thousand dead), communists/socialists (many but number not confirmed). Dark skinned people and Jehova's witnesses were also slaughtered.
-The Aryan Race: misused by the Nazis to mean a so-called master race that originated around Germany. It was known that a "perfect Aryan" was a blonde, blue-eyed, tall and muscular (for the man). The original term refers to a people speaking a Indo-European dialect.
-Lebensborn~Fount of Life: The program aimed to promote the growth of "superior" Aryan populations by providing excellent health care and living conditions to women and by restricting access to those deemed "fit". Houses were set up throughout Germany and many occupied territories. Many Lebensborn children were born to unwed mothers which helped lead to many rumors of rape.
-Hitler's Jewish Question 1933: Nazis "temporarily" suspend civil liberties for all citizens in 1933-Never restored...such as freedom of speech. The Nazis set up the first concentraton camp at Dachau in 1933. The first inmates are 200 communists (they weren't death camps...just camps where communist worked). Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Service, and teachers in public high schools. All but few Jewish students are banned from public high schools and colleges.
-Nuremburg Laws 1935: Tood away German citizenship from Jews thus making Jews second class citizens by removing civil rights. It establishd membership in the Jewish race as being anyone who either considered themselves Jewish or had three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents wee considered to be a mixed race. Eventually anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was at risk in Nazi Germany. Jews could only marry Jews, and there was to be no sexual relations between non-Jewish Germans and Jews.
-1936: Nazis boycott Jewish-owned businesses. Things kept on getting more and more rights taken away from them, but only in little steps.
-Kristallnacht~1938 ("Night of Broken Glass"): On the nights of November 9th and 10th of 1938, gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breatking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. In all, 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. Also in 1938, all Jewish children are expelled from public schools in Germany and Austria. Nazis take control of Jewish-owned businesses.
-1939: Hitler orders the systematic murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria. Jews were required to where armbands or yellow stars. This is the year that the possiblilty of extermination camps was being realized.
-1940: Nazis begin deporting German Jews to Poland. Jews are forced into ghettos, and Nazis begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland (where most of the death camps were).
-1941: Jews throughout Eastern Europe are forced into ghettos. In two days, German units shoot 33,771 Ukrainian Jews at BabiYar-the largest single massacre of the Holocaust.
-1942: Nazi officials announce the "Final Solution"-their plan to kill all European Jews. Five death camps begin operation in Poland: Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ghettos of Eastern Europe are being emptied as thousands of Jews are shipped to death camps. The US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union acknowledge that Germans are exterminating the Jews of Europe.
-1943: Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto resist as the Nazis begin new rounds of deportations. These Jews hold out for nearly a month before the Nazis put down the uprising.
-1944: Hitler takes over Hungary and begins deporting 12,000 Hungarian Jews each day to Auschwitz where they are murdered. This year was the same year that D-Day occured.
-1945: Hitler is defeated and World War II ends in Europe. THe Holocaust is over and the death camps are emptied. Many survivors are placed in displaced persons camp until the find a country willing to accept them (mostly the US or Israel).
-1947: The United Nations establishes a Jewish homeland in British-controlled Palestine, which becomes a State of Israel in 1948
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