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1) Descriptive Data
Teacher: Holly Fraiser/Shirley McAllister
SOL: 11.11: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the origins and effects of World War II, with emphasis on:
*      the rise and aggression of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan;
*      the role of the Soviet Union;
*      appeasement, isolationism, and the war debates in Europe and the United States prior to the outbreak of war;
*      the impact of mobilization for war, at home, and abroad;
*      major battles, military turning points, and key strategic decisions;
*      the Holocaust and its impact; and
*      the reshaping of the United States' role in world affairs after the war
Model(s) Used: Lecture/Discussion
Class U.S. History Date: 4/19/99 Grade Level 11 Ability Level: Average
Room Number 451 Unit World War II
Lesson number Topic Holocaust
Anticipated noise level (high, moderate, low)
2) Goals and Objectives
Instructional Goals
 To promote awareness of the events, causes, and impact of the holocaust on European culture.
 The students will analyze the holocaust and its political, emotional, and humanitarian impact on the 20th century.
 The students will connect the genocide of the holocaust to current genocide in the Balkans and other genocide from current history.
Specific Objectives
Cognitive: After the lecture and viewing the video:
 The students will list four personal rights denied the Jewish people during the rule of the Third Reich.
 The students will define ten terms of the holocaust.
 The students will trace the five major events leading to the internment of German "undesirables" in concentration and work camps.
 The students will connect the genocide of the holocaust to current genocide being carried out by Serbian government against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and ethnic cleansing incidents in Africa and in Iraq.
 Students will write a personal reaction paragraph to the video of the holocaust.
Affective:
 The students will describe their reactions to scenes from the video "Liberation of the Camps."
 The students will form judgements about the genocide of the Nazi regime.
 The students will gain insight to the many historical, social, religious, political, and economic factors which cumulatively resulted in the holocaust by creating a pyramid showing the escalation from forced emigration to the "final solution."
 The students will develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping in any society.
 Helps students develop awareness of the value of pluralism and encourages tolerance of diversity.
Psychomotor
 Given a map of Eastern Europe, the students will locate the areas from which the holocaust victims came.
3. Rationale
The lesson will promote student understanding of a) the scope of the holocaust, b) the groups targeted for racist extermination, c) the methods employed to exterminate large numbers of individuals, and d) the systematic genocide of the holocaust. Through the study of the Holocaust, students will develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping in any society. The lesson will develop an awareness of the value of pluralism and encourage tolerance of diversity. Further, the lesson helps students recognize current patterns of genocide.
4. Procedure

I. Introduction
A. Introductory focus
1. The teacher will check for prior knowledge of the students by asking the students for their definition/ideas/knowledge of the Holocaust.
Question: What was the Holocaust?
Why did it happen?
The teacher will ask students about recent movies and current events relative to the Holocaust. If no response, the teacher will ask about the recent oscar winning movie "Its a Beautiful Life" and "Shindler's List" as well as recent current events relative to Swiss banks "Swiss banks have agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle lawsuits filed by Holocaust survivors and their heirs claiming the banks illegally kept millions of dollars deposited by their relatives before and during World War II."
B. The teacher will then state the objectives of the lesson.
a. Recognize the central policy of the Nazi regime as a systematic genocide of individuals considered "inferior" to the Aryan race.
b. Demonstrates how a modern nation can utilize its technological expertise and bureaucratic infrastructure to implement destructive policies ranging from social engineering to genocide.
c. Gain insight to the many historical, social, religious, political and economic factors which cumulatively resulted in the holocaust.
d. Develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping in any society.
e. Helps students develop awareness of the value of pluralism and encourages tolerance of diversity.
C. Overview of Topic
1. Outline Hitler's reasons for the systematic destruction of the "non-Aryans."
2. Describe the timeline of holocaust.
3. Dispel idea that the holocaust was inevitable
II. Presentation
A. Brief lecture describing the holocaust and providing information to show how the Nazis progressed from emigration policy to the "final solution"
-- Overhead Map of concentration/death camps
B. Create the timeline in the systematic dehumanization practiced by the Third Reich.
*1933 - Hitler becomes chancellor - boycotts/Aryan Laws/book burnings
Relate book burnings to banning books from school libraries.
*1935 - Nuremberg Laws
*1939 - Invasion of Poland (Jews must wear Star of David) (Hand out stars to students)
*Ghettos Formed (Describe Life)
*Refugees - St. Louis incident, nations not accept large numbers of refugees, including US - Why? - Depression still gripping nation
*Hitler advances to Russia - Einsatzgruppen start murdering Jews and Communists
-- Show film clip of Einsatzgruppen
*Individual assassination of Jews too costly, time consuming, and hard on troops
*Himmler wants to find more efficient method of extermination
*Hitler's Final Solution
*Concentration vs Death Camps
What was life like?
Zylon B
Gas chambers
-- Overhead Map of Victim Location
-- Overhead Chart of Jewish Population
A. Have students look at the back of their Star of David. Ones with no mark depict individuals killed through execution, starvation, medical experiments, etc. Ones with X survived - Only 1. Describe how that individual would look.
*Death marches to hide genocide

At the beginning of this class, we described the holocaust as the systematic murder of more than 6 million. We have heard about the degradation and the terrible camp conditions and the Nazi's utter disregard for human life. However, I don't think most of us can imagine or picture what the murder of 6 million people means. We simply cannot visualize such evil. I feel the only way to really understand the holocaust is to see the result. I am going to show some film clips shot by the allied troops that liberated the death camps. It does contain nudity and very graphic and gruesome images of human remains that overcome the limitation of mere words and our imagination. Some may find these images very disturbing. If you feel you do not want to watch these clips, Mrs. Fraiser will give you a pass to the library. If you stay and during the film you feel you cannot watch any more, feel free to put your head down.

B Watch film clip from Liberation of the Camps
Questions:
What is your reaction to the films?
Was the holocaust real?
Could the Allies have done anything to prevent the holocaust?
III. Comprehension Monitoring
A. Teacher monitors student interactions, asks probing questions, uses the student input and ideas, keeps record of discussion points/participants, refers to hierarchy, generates extension questions, offers frequent feedback.

Now that we have reviewed the sequence of the holocaust and watched a film of its results, I want your reactions.
IV. Integration
A. Have students compare holocaust to current Serb/Albanian crisis.
V. Review and Closure
A. Teacher summarizes main points of discussion:
1. Holocaust was real.
2. Systematic degradation and destruction of a culture.
B. Students are news reporters with Allied liberation forces. Write a paragraph for your home newspaper describing the camps.
5. Assignments and Reminders of Assignments
HOME WORK ASSIGNMENT
Students will describe an idea or assumption they had about the holocaust prior to the discussion, and explain why that idea or assumption has or has not changed.

Special Notes and Reminders to Myself

Remember to give students the option to leave or discontinue watching the film.

6. Materials and Equipment Needed
Audiovisual:
VCR/TV hook up
Film clip of Einsatzgruppen
Film clip of Camp Liberation
Other:
Overhead of Concentration Camps and Killing Centers
Overhead of Jewish Population chart
Overhead of Map of Jewish Victims
7. Assessment, Reflection, and Revision
Questions for Formal Assessment
Use the following from the vocabulary on unit test
Briefly describe each of the following terms and explain the significance of each.
Holocaust
Final Solution
Death Camps
Kristallnacht
Einsatzgruppen
Multiple choice questions for formal assessment.
1. The purpose behind placing Polish Jews in ghettos was:
a. to give them a better place to live
b. to protect the Jewish citizens from Russian soldiers.
c. to control their access to food, provide a slave labor pool, and to insulate them from Aryan peoples.
d. to evaluate their skills for use in war production facilities.
2. Genocide is best described as:
a. the study of generations.
b. the systematic destruction of a race or culture.
c. the systematic development of an ancestral chart.
e. the systematic relocation of a race or culture to another nation or state.
Possible Essays for Assessment at end of Unit:
1. Describe the cultural/racial groups targeted by the Nazis as "undesirable," and explain why these groups were targeted.
3. Students are news reporters with Allied liberation forces. In your own words, write a paragraph for your home newspaper describing the camps.
4. In your own words, evaluate the similarities or differences between the holocaust and current actions in Kosovo by Serbian and NATO forces.

Informal Assessment
Student responses to questions and engagement in class discussion will be used for informal assessment

Vocabulary
Aryan
Auschwitz
Babi Yar
Belzec
Bergen-Belsen
Concentration Camp
Dachau
Death Marches
Einsatzgruppen
Euthanasia
Final Solution
Genocide
Heinrich Himmler
Holocaust
Kristallnacht
Nuremberg Laws
Treblinka
What is the Holocaust?
The Holocaust refers to a specific event in 20th century history:
The systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and their collaborators as a central act of state during World War II.
In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
Although Jews were the primary victims, up to one half million Gypsies and at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims of genocide. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe from 1933 to 1945, millions of other innocent people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were killed because of their nationality. Poles, as well as other Slavs, were targeted for slave labor, and as a result of the Nazi terror, almost two million perished. Homosexuals and others deemed "anti-social" were also persecuted and often murdered. In addition, thousands of political and religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior and many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment.
The events of the Holocaust occurred in two main phases: 1933-1939 and 1939-1945.
I. 1933-1939:
* They saw Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race," what they called the "master race."
* The Nazis mistakenly identified Jews as a race and defined this race as "inferior." They also spewed hatemongering propaganda which unfairly blamed Jews for Germany's economic depression and the country's defeat in World War I (1914-1918).
-- In 1933, new German laws forced Jews to quit their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life.
-- In April 1933, a boycott of Jewish businesses was instituted.
-- In 1935, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg stripped German Jews of their citizenship even though they retained limited rights.
-- These "Nuremberg Laws" defined Jews not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves but by the blood of their grandparents.
-- Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them: Jews could not attend public schools, go to theaters, cinemas, or vacation resorts, or reside, or even walk, in certain sections of German cities.
-- Between 1937 and 1939, Jews were forced from Germany's economic life: the Nazis either seized Jewish businesses and properties outright or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices.
-- In November 1938, this economic attack against German and Austrian Jews changed into the physical destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, the arrest of Jewish men, the destruction of homes, and the murder of individuals. This centrally organized riot (pogrom) became known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass").
-- Although Jews were the main target of Nazi hatred, the Nazis persecuted other groups they viewed as racially or genetically "inferior
-- Laws passed between 1933 and 1935 aimed to reduce the future number of genetic "inferiors" through involuntary sterilization programs: about 500 children of mixed (African/German) racial backgrounds and 320,000 to 350,000 individuals judged physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation procedures so they could not have children. Supporters of sterilization also argued that the handicapped burdened the community with the costs of their care. Many of Germany's 30,000 Gypsies were also eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. Reflecting traditional prejudices, new laws combined traditional prejudices with the new racism of the Nazis which defined Gypsies, by race, as "criminal and asocial."
-- Another consequence of Hitler's ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others the Nazis labeled "undesirables" and "enemies of the state." Many homosexuals, mostly male, were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps; under the 1935 Nazi-revised criminal code, the mere denunciation of an individual as "homosexual" could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah's Witnesses were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, since the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military. Their literature was confiscated, and they lost jobs, unemployment benefits, pensions, and all social welfare benefits. Many Witnesses were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Nazi Germany and their children were sent to juvenile detention homes and orphanages.
-- Between 1933 and 1936, thousands of people, mostly political prisoners and Jehovah's Witnesses, were imprisoned in concentration camps while several thousand German Gypsies were confined in special municipal camps.
-- The first systematic round-ups of German and Austrian Jews occurred after Kristallnacht, when approximately 30,000 Jewish men were deported to Dachau and other concentration camps and several hundred Jewish women were sent to local jails. At the end of 1938, the waves of arrests also included several thousand German and Austrian Gypsies.
-- Between 1933 and 1939, about half the German Jewish population and more than two-thirds of Austrian Jews (1938-1939) fled Nazi persecution. They emigrated mainly to Palestine, the United States, Latin America, China (which required no visa for entry), and eastern and western Europe (where many would be caught again in the Nazi net during the war). Jews who remained under Nazi rule were either unwilling to uproot themselves, or unable to obtain visas, sponsors in host countries, or funds for emigration. Most foreign countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, and France, were unwilling to admit very large numbers of refugees.
II. 1939-1945:
-- On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Within one month, the Polish army was defeated and the Nazis began their campaign to destroy Polish culture and enslave the Polish people, whom they viewed as "subhuman." Killing Polish leaders was the first step: German soldiers carried out massacres of university professors, artists, writers, politicians, and many Catholic priests.
-- Thousands of other Poles, including Jews, were imprisoned in concentration camps. The Nazis also "kidnapped" as many as 50,000 "Aryan-looking"
-- Polish children from their parents and took them to Germany to be adopted by German families. Many of these children were later rejected as not capable of Germanization and sent to special children's camps where some died of starvation, lethal injection, and disease.
-- As the war began in 1939, Hitler initialed an order to kill institutionalized, handicapped patients deemed "incurable
-- The doomed were then transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where specially constructed gas chambers were used to kill them.
-- In the months following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews, political leaders, communists, and many Gypsies were killed in mass executions.
-- The overwhelming majority of those killed were Jews. These murders were carried out at improvised sites throughout the Soviet Union by members of mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) who followed in the wake of the invading Germany army.
-- The most famous of these sites was Babi Yar, near Kiev, where an estimated 33,000 persons, mostly Jews, were murdered
-- World War II brought major changes to the concentration camp system. Large numbers of new prisoners, deported from all German-occupied countries, now flooded the camps.
-- "Night and Fog" decree
-- During the war, ghettos, transit camps, and forced labor camps, in addition to the concentration camps, were created by the Germans and their collaborators to imprison Jews, Gypsies, and other victims of racial and ethnic hatred, as well as political opponents and resistance fighters.
-- Following the invasion of Poland, three million Polish Jews were forced into approximately 400 newly established ghettos where they were segregated from the rest of the population. Large numbers of Jews were also deported from other cities and countries, including Germany, to ghettos in Poland and German-occupied territories further east.
-- In Polish cities under Nazi occupation, like Warsaw and Lodz, Jews were confined in sealed ghettos where starvation, overcrowding, exposure to cold, and contagious diseases killed tens of thousands of people
-- Between 1942 and 1944, the Germans moved to eliminate the ghettos in occupied Poland and elsewhere, deporting ghetto residents to "extermination camps," killing centers equipped with gassing facilities, located in Poland. After the meeting of senior German government officials in late January 1942 at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, the decision to implement "the final solution of the Jewish question" became formal state policy and Jews from western Europe were also sent to killing centers in the East.
-- The six killing sites were chosen because of their closeness to rail lines and their location in semi-rural areas, at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Chelmno was the first camp in which mass executions were carried out by gas, piped into mobile gas vans; 150,000 persons were killed there between December 1941 and March 1943, and June to July 1944. A killing center using gas vans and later gas chambers operated at Belzec where more than 600,000 persons were killed between May 1942 and August 1943.
-- Sobibor opened in May 1942 and closed one day after a rebellion of the prisoners on October 14, 1943; up to 200,000 persons were killed by gassing.
-- Treblinka opened in July 1942 and closed in November 1943; a revolt by the prisoners in early August 1943 destroyed much of the facility. At least 750,000 persons were killed at Treblinka, physically the largest of the killing centers. Almost all of the victims at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were Jews; a few were Gypsies. Very few individuals survived these four killing centers, where most victims were murdered immediately after arrival.
-- Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also served as a concentration camp and slave labor camp, became the killing center where the largest numbers of European Jews and Gypsies were killed. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941 of 250 malnourished and ill Polish prisoners and 600 Russian POWs, mass murder became a daily routine; more than 1.25 million were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 9 out of 10 were Jews. In addition, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and ill prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers. Between May 14 and July 8, 1944, 437,402 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 48 trains. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust. A similar system was implemented at Majdanek, which also doubled as a concentration camp and where at least 275,000 persons were killed in the gas chambers or died from malnutrition, brutality, and disease.
-- The methods of murder were the same in all the killing centers, which were operated by the S.S. The victims arrived in railroad freight cars and passenger trains, mostly from ghettos and camps in occupied Poland, but also from almost every other eastern and western European country. On arrival, men were separated from women and children. Prisoners were forced to undress and hand over all valuables. They were then driven naked into the gas chambers, which were disguised as shower rooms, and either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B (a form of crystalline prussic acid, also used as an insecticide in some camps) was used to asphyxiate them. The minority selected for forced labor were, after initial quarantine, vulnerable to malnutrition, exposure, epidemics, medical experiments, and brutality; many perished as a result.
-- The Germans carried out their systematic murderous activities with the active help of local collaborators in many countries and the acquiescence or indifference of millions of bystanders. However, there were instances of organized resistance. For example, in the fall of 1943, the Danish resistance, with the support of the local population, rescued nearly the entire Jewish community in Denmark from the threat of deportation to the East, by smuggling them via a dramatic boatlift to safety in neutral Sweden. Individuals in many other countries also risked their lives to save Jews and other individuals subject to Nazi persecution. One of the most famous was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who led the rescue effort which saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944.
-- Resistance movements existed in almost every concentration camp and ghetto of Europe. In addition to the armed revolts at Sobibor and Treblinka, Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto led to a courageous uprising in April-May, 1943, despite a predictable doomed outcome because of superior German force. In general, rescue or aid to Holocaust victims was not a priority of resistance organizations whose principal goal was to fight the war against the Germans. Nonetheless, such groups and Jewish partisans (resistance fighters) sometimes cooperated with each other to save Jews. On April 19, 1943, for instance, members of the National Committee for the Defense of Jews in cooperation with Christian railroad workers and the general underground in Belgium, attacked a train leaving the Belgian transit camp of Malines headed for Auschwitz and succeeded in assisting several hundred Jewish deportees to escape.
-- After the war turned against Germany and the Allied armies approached German soil in late 1944, the S.S. decided to evacuate outlying concentration camps. The Germans tried to cover up the evidence of genocide and deported prisoners to camps inside Germany to prevent their liberation. Many inmates died during the long journeys on foot known as "death marches." During the final days, in the spring of 1945, conditions in the remaining concentration camps exacted a terrible toll in human lives. Even concentration camps never intended for extermination, such as Bergen-Belsen, became death traps for thousands (including Anne Frank who died there of typhus in March 1945).
-- In May 1945, Nazi Germany collapsed, the S.S. guards fled, and the camps ceased to exist as extermination, forced labor, or concentration camps. (However, some of the concentration camps were turned into camps for displaced persons (DPs), which included former Holocaust victims. Nutrition, sanitary conditions, and accommodations often were poor. DPs lived behind barbed wire, and were exposed to humiliating treatment, and, at times, to anti-Semitic attacks.)
-- The Nazi legacy was a vast empire of murder, pillage, and exploitation that had affected every country of occupied Europe. The toll in lives was enormous. The full magnitude, and the moral and ethical implications, of this tragic era are only now beginning to be understood more fully.
-- The term "Aryan" originally referred to peoples speaking Indo-European languages. The Nazis perverted its meaning to support racist ideas by viewing those of Germanic background as prime examples of Aryan stock, which they considered racially superior. For the Nazis, the typical Aryan was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
Chronology of Revoked Rights

1933 All non-Aryan civil servants forcibly retired; Kosher butchering outlawed; German nationality can be revoked from those considered "undesirable".
1934 Jewish newspapers can no longer be sold in the streets; Jews deprived of the status of citizenship; marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Aryans forbidden
1936 Jews no longer have the right to vote
1937 Passports for all Jews for travel abroad greatly restricted
1938 Jews must carry ID cards and Jewish passports are marked with "J," Jews may no longer own or bear arms; Jews may no longer head businesses; Jews may no longer attend plays concerts, etc.; all Jewish children are moved to Jewish schools; Jews must hand over drivers' licenses and car registrations; Jews must sell their businesses and hand over securities and jewels; Jews may no longer attend universities.
1939 Jews must follow curfews; Jews must turn in radios to the police; Jews must wear yellow star of David
1940 Jews may no longer have phones; German Jews begin being taken into "protective custody" - deported to concentration camps
1941 Jews may not leave their houses without permission from the police; Jews may no longer use public telephones
1942 Jews are forbidden to subscribe to newspapers, keep pets, keep electrical equipment, own bikes, buy meat, use public transportation, attend school.
A BRIEF ROMANI HOLOCAUST CHRONOLOGY

1890 Conference organized in Germany on the Zigeunergeschmeiss ("Gypsy scum"). Military empowered to regulate movements of Gypsies.
1899 The Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance is established, and documents begin to be collected on Romani history, and on the Gypsy population in Germany. The Bavarian police create a special "Gypsy Affairs Unit" in the same year.
1909 A policy conference on "The Gypsy Question" is held, and the recommendation made that all Gypsies be branded with easy identification.
1920 Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, introduce the notion of "lives unworthy of life," suggesting that Gypsies should be sterilized and eliminated as a people. This notion, with the same name, is incorporated into Nazi race theory in 1933.
1922 (And throughout the 1920s): All Gypsies in German territories are to be photographed and fingerprinted.
1926 A July 16 law is directed at controlling the "Gypsy plague." This treatment is in direct violation of the terms of the Weimar Constitution.
1927 In Bavaria, special camps are built to incarcerate Gypsies. Eight thousand Gypsies are processed in this way.
1928 All Gypsies are placed under permanent police surveillance. Professor Hans Gunther publishes a document in which he claims that "it was the Gypsies who introduced foreign blood into Europe." More camps are built to contain Gypsies.
1930 Recommendation made that all Gypsies be sterilized.
1933 Nazis introduce a law to legalize eugenic sterilization. This is specifically named as written to control "Gypsies and most of the Germans of black color," these latter the descendants of the unions between African soldiers and Europeans from the period of the 1914-1918 War.
1934 Gypsies are being selected from January onwards for sterilization by injection and castration, and being sent to camps at Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Sachsenhausen and elsewhere. Two laws issued in this year forbid Germans from marrying "Jews, Gypsies and Negroes."
1935 Gypsies become subject to the restriction of the Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and Honor. Marriage with white people is forbidden. Criteria defining who is Gypsy are exactly twice as strict as those defining any other group.
1938 Between June 12th and 18th, Zigeuneraaufraumungswoche ("Gypsy clean-up week") takes place, when hundreds of Gypsies throughout Germany and Austria are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. Gypsies are first targeted population to be forbidden to attend school. Himmler's recommendation that certain Roma be kept alive in a compound under the Law for the Protection of Historic Monuments for anthropologists to study, is ridiculed and never implemented.
1939 Nazi party decree states that "the aim of the measures taken by the state must be the racial separation once and for all of the Gypsy race from the German nation, then the prevention of racial mixing." The Office of Racial Hygiene issues a statement saying "All Gypsies should be treated as hereditarily sick; the only solution is elimination. The aim should therefore be the elimination without hesitation of this defective element in the population."
1940 The first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust takes place in January of this year, when 250 Romani children are used as guinea pigs to test the cyanide gas crystal, at the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Employment of any kind is forbidden to Gypsies in this same year.
1941 Gypsies are the first targeted population to be forbidden to serve in the army. Eight hundred Roma are murdered in one action on the night of December 24 in the Crimea. On July 31of this year, Heydrich, "Head of the Reich Main Security Office and leading organizational architect of the Nazi Final Solution," puts the machinery of the Endlosung into operation with his directive to the Einsatzkommandos to "kill all Jews, Gypsies and mental patients." The Holocaust begins.
1944 In the early hours of the August 1, four thousand Roma are gassed and incinerated at Auschwitz-Birkenau in one mass action, remembered by survivors as Zigeunernacht.
1945 By the end of the war, between 70% and 80% of the Romani population had been annihilated by Nazis. No Roma were called to testify at the Nuremberg Trials, and no one came forth to testify on their behalf. No war crimes reparations have been paid to the Roma as a people.
1950 First of many statements over the years to follow, made by the German government, that they owe nothing to the Romani people by way of war crimes reparations.
1992 Germany sells Romani asylum seekers back to Romania for $21 million, and begins shipping them in handcuffs on November 1. Some Roma commit suicide rather than go. The German press agency asks western journalists not to use the word "deportation" in their coverage of this, because that word has "uncomfortable historical associations."

This brief chronology was condensed from "Gypsy History in Germany and Neighboring Lands: A Chronology to the Holocaust and Beyond," in Nationalities Papers, 19(3):395-412(1991), a special issue on Gypsies.

Bibliography

Internet Sites:

http://www.scetv.org/HolocaustForum/images/Killcntr.gif
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/58-2.html
http://www.fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/glossary.htm
http://www.ushmm.org/

Reference:

Gilbert, Martin, Auschwitz and the Allies
Levin, Nora, The Holocaust
Werth, Alexander, Russia at War
GoldHagen, Daniel J., Hitler's Willing Executioners
Clark, Alan, Barbarossa
Abzug, Robert, Inside the Vicious Heart
Fleming, Gerald, Hitler and the Final Solution
Danzer, Klor de Alva Wilson, Woloch, The Americans

Video

A&E Undercover Report - Einsatzgruppen
PBS broadcast of Camp Liberation

E-Mail Shirley!

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