hi in the next series of videos i'd like to talk about the holocaust and the holocaust is probably one of the most difficult things to talk about because it's one of the worst crimes that's ever been committed by humanity and i'm going to do this over two videos because i want us to talk about this properly it's a complicated period of history it's difficult period of history to look at and we're going to look at quite a simple question here when and where did the holocaust take place but that simple question actually has a very complicated answer and i'm going to look at this in two sections or two parts in this first part i'm going to look at what happened in the holocaust between the years 1939 and 1942 so in other words the first half of the war in the next video i'll look at the latter half now just to fill you in in our previous learning we've been learning about the fact that jewish persecution had been building in nazi germany from 1933 to 1939. we learned about when the nazis took over as soon as they took over really within a couple of months they were encouraging boycott to jewish shops we learned a lot about the fact that there was jewish propaganda being spread during this period in particular by the nazi newspaper desh dhurma we learned how the nazis were humiliating and persecuting individual jews we learned how jewish signs had appeared in german towns and really was spreading throughout the country at this time making jewish people feel like they weren't citizens we learned about the fact that there was an immense amount of legislation anti-semitic legislation that was passed that persecuted the jews and we were really ended up in our story last time you saw one of these videos at crystal knocked in november of 1938 where persecution really changed again into being quite physical at crystal knocked jewish uh synagogues and businesses were burnt and smashed and jews were murdered now it's important that we have this understanding that jewish persecution was building through this period because jewish persecution changes and builds again from 1939 until 1945. and that persecution changes as a result of occupation and these videos these series of videos in unit 5 have been looking at occupation when the nazis occupied other countries and jewish persecution changes with occupation and this is when the holocaust begins now by the end of 1945 the nazis had murdered 11 million people and in that 11 million people were jews slavs gypsies communists and homosexuals those people that the nazis considered unto mention which we've looked at in previous videos six million of that total of 11 million were jews though and jews were by far the group that was most targeted by the nazis they planned to wipe out the jews completely and the crime that they committed the murder of those six million jews is known as the holocaust so it's really important we have in our minds that the holocaust is something that is specifically about the murder of those jews and we looked in previous lessons about why the nazis wanted to target the jews because of those myths that they were perpetrating now it's really important that we understand that the holocaust happens in distinct stages and that's where i wanted that idea that question is complex about when and where does it happen because it definitely changes in these six years in the early years of the holocaust there is definitely a distinct stage of forced emigration i'm going to talk about what that means in a minute after that forced immigration there is a phase of ghettoization after that the holocaust is about the holocaust by bullets that's as far as our video today will go and then after that is the holocaust by gas which is probably the thing that i'd imagine most of you may already know about so let's talk about the whole the first three stages of the holocaust up to 1942 as i just said the first stage of the holocaust was about persecution and in particular emigration and that word emigration means people leaving their original countries to go elsewhere and that policy begins when the nazis occupy austria and they do this before the start of the second world war in 1938 and that occupation of austria is known as the ancelus which means the joining of germany and austria together in austria there was a population of 192 000 jews and as soon as the nazis occupy austria the persecution of those people begin now up to this point those 192 000 jews have been pretty have been living in um happiness with the rest of the population of austria but as soon as the nazis occupy persecution begins jews are beaten and they're humiliated famously on the streets of vienna which is the capital of austria jews were forced to scrub the pavements and austrians stood by and watched as nazi soldiers really threatened these people with violence if they didn't join in now initially the policy in austria was about getting the jews to leave and many jews understandably wanted to leave because why would you want to stay in a place of persecution however this you have to remember the fact that this is their home and this is where they wanted to be now the nazis set up something called the central office for jewish immigration and they create this office to basically try and force really jews to emigrate out of austria and that population of 192 000 jews nearly 60 percent of them leave so 110 000 jews emigrated in two years but this is not as simple as you pack up your stuff and you leave most of the time the nazis actually uh forced you to give up your house your apartment your belongings they actually even charged the jews um a fee in which two leave so this was not a simple decision for those 192 000 people about whether they would want to leave or not now throughout this presentation i'd like to introduce you to individual stories i'm going to do that right now let's look at what happened with the story of one jewish austrian family and this is maria altman's story and it involves this painting here which is probably one of the most famous paintings of all time really now maria altman who is still alive was one of those 110 000 jews who were forced to emigrate from vienna in 1938 she was forced to believe behind all of her treasured possessions including this painting here this is a painting of a portrait of her aunt by the famous artist gustav klimt and she had to leave behind this painting that was then taken by the nazis this painting ended up in the state museum in austria and in 1998 a journalist told maria about the painting where it was and maybe how she could try and get it back and in the year 2000 maria actually sued the austrian government she took the government to court and 62 years after it's stolen that painting was returned to maria and taken to the united states maria ultman's story to me shows one aspect of what happened to these people forced to emigrate and forced to leave behind your most treasured possessions that were then just taken by the nazis so the first stage the first idea that the nazis had really is about trying to force jews to leave that changes and the polar policy of immigration works to an extent in austria because the austrians had quite a small small jewish population but in september of 1939 the nazis invade poland and again the nature of jewish persecution changes and it changes because the scale of the issue changes for the nazis poland had a population of 3.5 million jews this was a population that the nazis had not really had to deal with the scale of this before and what happens to those 3.5 million jews is really awful let's look at what happens initially in those first few years of occupation so 1939 to 1941 the persecution changes from being about immigration to being about ghettoization and immediately as soon as the nazis occupy poland they actually discuss moving the jews to a completely new land in the east so they discuss about moving the 3.5 million jews out of poland into a new country the problem with that is that they had no new country to send those jews to so as a short-term solution they decide they're going to concentrate the jews into ghettos and if you don't know what the word ghetto means you need to it's important ghettos are enclosed districts of towns and cities where jews were isolated so imagine that in your home city the jews are forced into an area of three or four streets and that's the only place in that city they can live that's what we would now call a ghetto and here is a picture of the warsaw ghetto in 1941 and ghettos were all over poland this map here shows the general government which we now know obviously is what poland was the general government is the name we've seen this in previous videos of the name that was given to the country that was poland all of those blue dots are ghettos and the red dots are large ghettos so there was a red there was a large ghetto and warsaw which we're going to look at in a minute what i'm hoping you will see from this map though is that ghettos were everywhere so the jews from the entirety of this country are put into these small tiny places now the most famous of these ghettos was warsaw and the warsaw ghetto was a terrible place which is where this photo comes from which i'm sure you may have seen before it's one of the most famous photos of an artsy occupation because you can see the fear that is on these people's faces in warsaw at the ghetto there was a three metre high wall that went round that ghetto and it was topped with barbed wire and that kept the jews in that ghetto held nearly half a million jews now that was the third of the population of warsaw a third of the population of the entire city however the ghetto was in a region was in an area that was only 2.4 percent of the city so you've got nearly a third of the population in an area of two percent you can imagine the conditions inside on average 15 people shed each apartment and those cramped conditions led to awful disease and death inside the ghettos over 145 000 people died in the warsaw ghetto in three years so the second stage of jewish persecution during the holocaust was this idea about ghettoization let's look at one person's story again that person's story that i'd like to look at is emmanuel wringle bombs now wrinkle blood was a jewish historian and he lived in the ghetto and he decided to form a collection of documents to show what life was there and at great risk he collected diaries papers posters from in the ghetto and he hid that archive of material in metal cat milk cans and boxes you can see those on the screen there now emmanuel and his family were murdered by the gestapo but quite a while after the war these metal boxes were discovered and it's the wrinkle blum archive that you can see here is the reason why we know so much about what happened in the ghetto wrangle blum to me is a grain and a fascinating individual because he shows that even though these people were ghettoized and treated in these horrific ways they did not take it lying down these people are fighting back in their own individual ways now in june of 1941 the nazis invaded the soviet union and again the nature of jewish persecution changes in the holocaust so now we enter a third stage and that third stage is the holocaust by bullets and this is where mass murder begins on a vast scale there is already by 1941 being the mass murder of a significant number of jews that had not been on a vast scale though this is where that scale really begins and the holocaust by bullets is caused is is led by these groups of units of people called einsatzgruppen they were ss soldier units and their entire purpose was sent into murder jews they were mobile killing units there were four of these units a b c and d and each of those units had between 500 to a thousand men sometimes they were involved local police sometimes they involved other local populations and what they did is they followed after the army so the army went in and occupied these new places so places like latvia and belarusia and the einsatz group and went in behind them and at each village and each town they rounded up jews and communists they marched into secluded areas like forest lands they made them dig pits and they shot them and they murdered these people and the scale of this is really quite atrocious this map here is part of a report that was delivered by one of the um brigadiers of the einsatzgruppen and it shows the number of people the number of executions that just one group have carried out throughout eastern europe you can see the numbers involved here they shot 41 000 people at minsk they've killed 193 people up right there by the sea in riga they've killed up 35 000 people and what really sickens me about this map is the fact that these people are being so explicit and obvious about these murders this is not saying they're trying to cover up this is something that they did on a vast scale and by the winter of 1941 nearly a million jews had been murdered so again remembering back to the start of this video six million jews were killed in total a million had already been killed by the end of 1941 with really three years of the war still to go let's look at one person's story again and this is dina cheva's story now praniceva was a jewish actress from kiev in the ukraine and on september of 1941 an einsatz group enforced matched march dina and the rest of the jews out of kiev and in what is now going to be known really as one of the most horrific mass murders in history they're taken to a local ravine that ravine is a place called babaya that ravine which you can see in this picture here was 150 meters long 30 meters wide and 15 meters deep and in small groups the jews were made to lie down in the ravine and they were mercifully shot with machine guns they were murdered so they murdered all of the jews from this place dina was one of the last people to face this fate and somehow miraculously she escaped the bullets she lay there and played dead as the soil was poured on top of those bullets but later she managed to dig herself out and out of the door of the dirt and actually she managed to survive the war and again i think the story of babaya here shows the scale the horrific crime that was committed and the fact that individual people like dina managed to do something now so far we've looked at just to recap where we've got to the holocaust happens in distinct stages it starts with forcing jews to leave the countries that were occupied forced emigration in places like austria the nature of persecution changes when the nazis invade other countries like poland though and their second really stage of the holocaust is about ghettoization trying to concentrate the jews into those smaller regions in smaller places that changes again when the nazis invade the soviet union and this is really where the mass murder begins and in this first stage we get the holocaust by bullets and then the next part the next video that i'm going to that you can watch for next week that's when the holocaust by gas begins in the death camps