Einsatzgruppen And Ghettos

Question 1

What was the Einsatzgruppen? (5)

Answer 1

• During the Nazi invasions of Poland and USSR, the Einsatzgruppen burnt towns and villages and executed thousands of people, most of them Jewish
• Many Jews were identified by informers and taken to execution sights and some had to dig their own graves.
• The targets were adult males but by August 1941 this was widened to include the entire Jewish population
• The Nazis eventually stopped the process because they believed that it was a waste of bullets.
• By 1943, an estimated 2 million people (mainly Jews) had been murdered this way.

Question 2

What was the Madagascar plan?

Answer 2

In summer 1940, the Nazi governments ‘Jewish Department’ suggested the Madagascar plan - exhaling all Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. This proved impossible because the British navy was blockading German ports.

Question 3

What were ghettos?

Answer 3

Segregated areas where Jews were forced to live. At first they were ‘open’ but later they were ‘sealed’ - the Nazis surrounded them with walls and guards

Question 4

How many ghettos did the Nazis create?

Answer 4

1,000 ghettos in Eastern Europe, each with a Jewish council nominally in control. The Nazis used ghettos Jews as forced labour in their factories

Question 5

Which was the largest ghetto?

Answer 5

The Warsaw ghetto where 400,000 Jews were forced into an area of 3.4 square km.

Question 6

What were conditions like in ghettos? (3)

Answer 6

• Living conditions were harsh and dirty, and many people died of disease (such as typhus)
• The Nazis imposed a deliberate policy of starvation rations, so thousands of people starved or froze to death
• Overcrowding was common
• As a result armed Jewish resistance developed in almost all of the large ghettos

Question 7

What was the final solution?

Answer 7

On 20th January 1942 15 senior Nazis met in Wannsee to decide how to deal with the ‘Jewish Problem’. They then decided to establish ‘Death Camps’ to execute Europe’s Jewish population.

Question 8

What were Jewish Sonderkommando?

Answer 8

Jewish prisoners who had to encourage the unfit workers to enter the gas chambers

Question 9

How were prisoners killed in the gas chambers in treblinka, sbibor, belzec and chelmno?

Answer 9

Prisoners there were killed by exhaust fumes

Question 10

When was the last ghetto liquidated?

Answer 10

Łódź in August 1944