Weimar and Nazi Germany Topic Summaries

Treatment of Jews during the war

GCSE > History > Eduqas > GCSE History: Weimar and Nazi Germany (1890-1945) > Germany during WWII (1939–1945) > Treatment of Jews during the war
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Key Terms
  • Ghettos:
    • Jews were rounded up and confined in walled-off sections of cities known as ghettos, designed as temporary holding areas before deportation. They were not allowed to leave the ghettos; attempting escape often resulted in being shot.
    • Ghettos had extreme overcrowding, starvation-level food rations, and a lack of fuel. Around 55,000 died in the Warsaw Ghetto alone.
  • Einsatzgruppen (Nazi Death Squads):
    • The German invasion of Russia brought millions more Jews under Nazi control. Special Nazi death squads were formed to carry out mass executions of Jews in newly occupied areas.
    • Jews were rounded up, taken to remote locations, forced to dig their own graves, and then shot. By 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered approximately 2 million people, mainly Russian Jews.
  • The Final Solution:
    • In 1941, the Nazis decided on a ‘Final Solution’ to deal with the growing number of Jews under their control, as shooting them was inefficient and wasteful. Top Nazi leaders met in Berlin for the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to plan mass extermination through death camps built in Poland, far from Germany.
    • Jews arriving at camps were either forced into labour or sent straight to gas chambers disguised as showers.

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