Holocaust Dbq Essay

Holocaust Document Based Question

This question is based on the accompanying documents. The question is designed to test your ability to work with historical documents, such as primary and secondary sources. You are to analyze and interpret each document, and use them as sources for your essay.

Part A

Historical Context: Genocide Holocaust

Task:

Using information from the documents and your knowledge of global history, answer the questions that follow each document in Part A. Your answers to the questions will help you write the part B essay in which you will be asked to explain:

• What were the precipitating factors to the Holocaust?

• What were the political, economic, and social repercussions of the Holocaust?

• How could a genocide

as tragic as the Holocaust occur as recently as the 20th century and in a civilization as advanced as Germany?
• How was the Nazi regime anti-Semitic?

Part B

Directions: Write a well-organized essay with an introduction, two to three body paragraphs, and a conclusion, that includes references.

Rubric for essay:

Criteria 4 3 2 1
Focus and detail Describes with detail the precipitating factors to the Holocaust and how the holocaust manifested.

Adequately describes the precipitating factors to the Holocaust and how the Holocaust manifested. Gaps in the understanding of the Holocaust. Includes some factual errors and misrepresentations. Demonstrates little to no knowledge of the precipitating factors to the Holocaust or how the Holocaust manifested.

References Makes abundant use of sources from the DBQ. Uses some references from the DBQ. Only includes one reference from DBQ. Does not include any references from the DBQ.

Sentence, structure, and grammar. Introduction, 2-3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion with no grammatical errors. There are three complete paragraphs, some are not indented. Introduction and conclusion are incomplete, contains some grammatical errors. Abundant grammatical errors, essay is not structured in paragraphs.

Part A

Short Answer Questions

Document #1 Speech by Joseph Goebbels on Kristallnacht

“It is an intolerable state of affairs [Goebbels told members of the press] that within our borders and for all these years hundreds of thousands of Jews still control whole streets of shops, populate our recreation spots and, as foreign apartment owners, pocket the money of German tenants, while their racial comrades abroad agitate for war against Germany and gun down German

officials.”

Source: After Kristallnacht: An Infamous Press Conference 'Justifies' Terror, 1938

1. In what way is Kristallnacht discrimination against Jews?
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2. What is Joseph Goebbels advocating with Kristallnacht?

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Document #2 Starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto
“Life in the ghettos was usually unbearable. Overcrowding was common. One apartment might have several families living in it. Plumbing broke down, and human waste was thrown in the streets along with the garbage. Contagious diseases spread rapidly in such cramped, unsanitary housing. People were always hungry. Germans deliberately tried to starve residents by allowing them to purchase only a small amount of bread, potatoes, and fat. Some residents had some money or valuables they could trade for food smuggled into the ghetto; others were forced to beg or steal to survive.”
Source: "Life in the Ghettos." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.
Describe how the Jewish population in the Warsaw Ghetto managed to survive:
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Document # 3 Hitler and the Aryan Race
“All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan.

This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word 'man.' He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illuminated the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of the earth ... It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of every great structure in human

culture.”
- Adolf Hitler
Source: Mein Kampf (1925-26), American Edition (1943), 290. In William Lawrence Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1990), 86-87.

1. Based on the quote, why does Adolf Hitler see the Aryan race as the superior race?
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Document # 4 Eyewitness Testimony from Holocaust Survivor
“ON MAY 20, 1944, I arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau as a fourteenyearold from the camp at Theresienstadt. The crematorium greeted us with its horrible tongues of flame coming out of its smokestacks. those of us able to march set out toward the camp on foot and had to carry the sick. Many of the elderly refused to cooperate with the SS, which had taken the last little piece of food from them. They were killed on the spot. After midnight we entered the camp. In the camp we went to join the Czechs; for the first two days we got nothing to eat. In these two days we saw how people who had once been good human beings had turned into ravening wolves. They did not care that we were their countrymen; they beat us to save their own lives.
In the camp it was well known that every transport was gassed after six months. I had been in the camp a month when the oldest transport was gassed. They took us immediately to the selection, at which the strongest men and women were sorted out. The remainder were gassed.”
Source: Weiss, Brunn J. "Experiences of a Fifteen Year Old in Birkenau." Horror Stories from the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz. Westview Press, n.d. Web.
1. Based on the quote, describe how prisoners were treated at Auschwitz:
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Document #5 Nazi boycott of Jewish Shops
“Just a week after the Enabling Act made Hitler dictator of Germany, a national boycott of Jewish shops and department stores was organized by Nazis under the direction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
The boycott was claimed to be in reaction to unflattering newspaper stories appearing in Britain and America concerning Hitler's new regime. The Nazis assumed most journalists were either Jewish or sympathetic to Jews and thus they labeled the bad publicity as "atrocity propaganda" spread by "international Jewry.”
Source: "Nazis Boycott Jewish Shops." The History Place - Triumph of Hitler: Nazis Boycott Jewish Shops. The History Place, 2001. Web.
1. Why did the Nazi Party institute a boycott of Jewish owned businesses?
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Document #6 Hitler and Jews
“The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet.
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.” – Adolf Hitler
Source: "Adolf Hitler." Excerpts from Mein Kampf. N.p., n.d. Web. (-- removed HTML --) .
1. Based on the quote, in what way was Adolf Hitler anti-Semitic?
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Document # 7 The Star of David
“Under the Nazi regime Jewish people were forced to wear identifiers such as Star of David armbands or badges. This white armband has a blue Star of David sewn onto it. Hans Frank; Governor General of Nazi occupied Poland, decreed on November 23rd 1939 that all Jewish people over a certain age had to wear a 4 inch wide white armband displaying a blue Star of David on their right arm. The intention was to isolate, harass and humiliate Jewish people, and further embedded Nazi ideology that Jewish people were different from everyone else by marking them out from the rest of the population.”
Source: HolocaustCentUK. "Star of David; Armband." The National Holocaust Centre and Museum. N.p., 04 Dec. 2016. Web. (-- removed HTML --) .
1. According to this document, why did the Nazi regime force Jews to wear the Star of David? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Document #8 The Diary of Anne Frank

“All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the effect that they 'sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New Order." Eighty percent have decided to obey the dictates of their conscience, but the penalty will be severe. Any student refusing to sign will be sent to a German labor camp.” – The Diary of Anne Frank
Source: Goodrich, Frances, Albert Hackett, Wendy Ann. Kesselman, and Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2001. Print.
1. According to Anne Frank, how did the Nazi Regime treat the well-educated, such as college students?