Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Holocaust WebQuest



In 1933, the Jewish population of Europestood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and theircollaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.
As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians forforced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.


1) The word “genocide” was a new word…how did it come to be? Where did it come from?
2) Define genocide in your own words.
3) What time period did the Holocaust happen in?

4. What “levels” or types of people were drawn to the beliefs of Hitler and the Nazi Party?
5. How did these events lead to the rise to power of the Nazi Party?
a. Treaty of Versailles
b. Stock Market Crash in New York
c. Nazis lose support in Parliamentary elections

6. What was Hitler’s term for the “master race?” Describe this type of person.
7. What types of German citizens were victims of the Nazi Party?
8. What did German scientists and physicians do to further the idea of “a perfect race?”
9. What was the racial purity law?

10. What is anti-Semitism?
11. What are some of the beliefs that are different in the Jewish and Christian religions?
11. When did anti-Semitism begin? What happened?
12. What other nations treated Jews as scapegoats (placed the blame on them)? {describe two}
13. Who was Karl Lueger? What did he believe?

14. According to the Nuremberg Law of 1935, how did the German government decide if someone was Jewish? What
was the problem with this law?
15. What did the German government require of Jews in German society?
16. Why did the Nazi’s moderate their anti-Jewish attacks before the 1936 Olympic Games?
17. What happened after the Olympic Games to the German Jews?

18. What happened on November 9, 1938? What caused the violence?
19. What was the result of the Night of Broken Glass? What happened to the Jews then?

20. What countries accepted the most Jewish refugees?

21. Why did the US not allow more refugees to come into the country before WWII?
22. By 1938, how many Jews had left Germany?
23. What was the Wagner-Rogers bill?

24. What was the goal of the “Final Solution?”
25. How did the Nazi’s hope to achieve the “Final Solution?”

26. What is a ghetto? Describe it?
27. How many ghettos existed in German occupied territories?
28. Describe the largest ghetto.

29. Describe the picture and explain people are treated.

30. Describe how the conditions worsened.
31. What does Abe do? Where does he go? Why?

32. What were the first Nazi concentration camps?
33. What was the primary purpose of these camps?

34. Describe what happens to most “workers.”

35. What happened at most of these camps?Death Marches
36. Why were people forced to go on these marches?

37. Describe this photo. What would be a good caption for it.

38. Choose three images. Tell what it is and then describe them.

39. Which county was the first to liberate the concentration camps?
40. When Auschwitz was liberated, what was found besides sick and exhausted prisoners?
41. Describe what the American army journalist saw at Dachau.
42. Why did so many surviving prisoners die within a few days of being freed?

43. Describe one hardship survivors had to face.

44. Read the poem and summarize what it is about.


45. If you were going to teach about the Holocaust; what would you include?  Why?

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