The Holocaust

The Holocaust
Part of World War II
Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland in May 1944.
Description	Genocide of Jews, Jehovah Witness members, Homosexuals, Bisexuals, mentally and physically disabled people, Slavs, Communists, Roma, Gypsies, some Germans and other people who opposed Nazism, people who attemped to or even killed Nazis or some of their collaborators, Balts, prisoners-of-war, inteligentsia, anti-Nazi/anti-Nazi collaborator-type people (such as leaders), and many other targeted ethnic groups of people.
Location	1. Nazi Germany 2. Almost every or even every country that was occupied and/or annexed by Nazi Germany. 3. Most countries which collaborated with Nazi Germany, and in the territories some of those countries had occupied and/or even annexed. 4. Some extremely few other countries which deported and/or even murdered their own Jewish population
Date	Mostly between June and September, 1942, (over about c. 100 days long period.). Between 22 March 1933 and 9 May 1945, (12 years, 1 month, and 47 days long period), counting all of the deportations, abuses, tortures, ghettoization, rapes, and murders from the Holocaust.
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportation, beating, torture, murder, abuse, neglect, assault, rape, forced labor, robbery, hostile and aggressive treatment, ghettoization, imprisonment, internment, confinement, false imprisonment, restrainment, underhuman treatment, humiliation, mockery, namecalling, pogroms, riots, violent riots,starvation, dehydration, malnutrition, lack of proper hygiene, filthyness, illness, executions, belittling, forced nudity, aerial bombing, gassing, gunshooting, violence, human experiments, dehumanization, tramautic injury, injury, trauma, concussion, hanging, lynching, and many other tolls of seperate forms of the catastrophic destruction of a specific group (or groups) of seperate people.
Deaths	Around 5.5 to 6 million Jews, around 1 million ethnic Poles, around 950 to 2500 Jehovah Witness members, other targeted ethnic groups.
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany and its collaborators
Motive	Hatred for a specific group (or groups) of people
Trials	Nuremberg trials, Subsequent Nuremberg trials, Trial of Adolf Eichmann, and others

The Holocaust, sometimes called The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה), was a genocide in which Nazi Germany, their collaborators, and others systematically deported and/or murdered Jews, ethnic Poles, Jehovah Witness members, and other targeted ethnic groups of people. Around 5.5 to 6 million Jews, around 1 million ethnic Poles, around 950 to 2500 Jehovah Witness members, and other targeted ethnic groups of people were deported, forced to work, and/or killed. The Holocaust mostly took place from June to September, 1942, but started on 22 March 1933, with the opening of the very first Nazi concentration camp, and ended on 9 May 1945, with the liberation of the very last Nazi concentration camp.

Along with Jews, the Nazis also claimed Slavs, communists, Roma people, disabled people, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses were inferior. These people were rounded up, put in ghettos, forced to work in extermination camps, and then killed in gas chambers.

Why were the Jews killed?

See also: Anti-Semitism

There was hatred and persecution of Jews (Anti-Semitism) in Europe for hundreds of years. Many people wrongly thought that all Jews became rich by stealing money from other people, such as Christians; that they did not like people other than their fellow Jews; and that they harmed children to use their blood for religious rituals (blood libel). These beliefs were not true and were based on stereotypes and prejudices.

However, these beliefs were popular in the German-speaking world and elsewhere in the late 1800s.

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria during this time, when many people disliked Jews. He may have been jealous of Jewish success in Austria. However, in a book he wrote called Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), he said it was the Jews' fault that Germany and Austria lost World War I. He also wrote that Germany's economic problems were the Jews' fault. Many people agreed with Hitler’s ideas and supported him as the leader of the Nazi Party.

Deaths

See the main article: Holocaust victims

Not all deaths were written down, so the exact numbers are unknown. However, various sources approximate:

• Jews (5.1–6 million killed), including:
  • Polish Jews (3 million killed);
• Ethnic Poles (1.8-2 million killed);
• Roma and Sinti (200,000–800,000 killed);
• Disabled people (200,000–250,000 killed);
• Homosexuals (22,000–25,000 killed);
• Jehovah's Witnesses (950–2500 killed).

People who were semitic (Jewish) were killed to begin with by carbon monoxide from motor-vehicle exhaust pipes, then by a rat-poison which contained cyanide, named Zyklon-B for selling. Zyklon was especially used in Auschwitz and one other camp.

Led by Hitler, the Nazis killed millions of Jews. They forced Jews to wear the golden Star of David on their upper bodies. Jews were rounded up by the thousands and crammed into trains that took them to concentration camps like Auschwitz as well as death camps. Most of the Jews killed in the Holocaust were not German. They were from Poland or the Soviet Union.

The Nazis killed millions of people, hundreds at a time, with poison gas in special rooms called gas chambers. They forced others to dig giant holes in the ground where, after days of hard work, Jews and other prisoners were shot, buried, and burned in a mass grave. The Nazis executed many others by shooting, stabbing, or beating them to death. Many also died in forced marches from one camp to another. Other causes of death include starvation, diseases, and freezing to death because of the terrible conditions in the concentration camps.

On the other hand, there were people who saved Jews from the Holocaust because they thought it was the right thing to do. Some of them were later given "Righteous Among the Nations" awards by Yad Vashem.

Holocaust denial

See the main article: Holocaust denial

Some people say the Holocaust did not happen at all, or was not as bad as historians say it was. This is called Holocaust denial. However, historians agree that the Holocaust did happen and have been described correctly. Many Holocaust deniers say that the Nazis did not kill so many people. Instead, they claim many of these people died because they were ill or didn't have enough to eat. But historical accounts, eyewitness evidence, and documentary evidence from the Nazis themselves clearly prove that the ideas of Holocaust deniers are not true. Jews were killed because Hitler ordered it. In Germany and other countries it is against the law to say that the Holocaust never happened.

Related pages

• Babi Yar
• Genocide
• Nazi Germany
• Pogrom
• Righteous Among the Nations
• Judaism
• Sonderkommando
• The Holocaust in Germany
• The Holocaust in Saar Protectorate
• The Holocaust in Austria
• The Holocaust in Sudentenland
• The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia
• The Holocaust in Palestine
• The Holocaust in Wartheland
• The Holocaust in General Government
• The Holocaust in Denmark
• The Holocaust in Norway
• The Holocaust in Netherlands
• The Holocaust in Belgium
• The Holocaust in Luxembourg
• The Holocaust in Vichy France and occupied territories
• The Holocaust in Kingdom of Romania
• The Holocaust in Kingdom of Hungary
• The Holocaust in Yugoslavia
• The Holocaust in Greece
• The Holocaust in Soviet Union
• The Holocaust in Finland
• The Holocaust in Tunisia
• The Holocaust in Slovakia

More reading

• Sheehan, Sean (2007). The Holocaust (How Did It Happen?). Franklin Watts. ISBN 978-0-7496-7723-7.
• Fischel, Jack (2010). Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust (3 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-3016-2. The Holocaust refers to the Nazi objective of annihilating every Jewish man, woman, and child who fell under their control.
• Hayes, Peter (2015). How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader. University of Nebraska Press. JSTOR j.ctt1d9nhk3.
• Hilberg, Raul (2003). The Destruction of the European Jews. Holmes & Meier. ISBN 978-0-3000-9592-0. Little by little, some documents were gathered and books were written, and after about two decades the annihilation of the Jews was given a name: Holocaust.
• Landau, Ronnie (2016). The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-7807-6971-4. The Holocaust involved the deliberate, systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe between 1941 and 1945.
• Marrus, Michael (2015). Perspectives on the Holocaust (1 ed.). University of California. ISBN 9-780-8873-6252-1. The Holocaust, the murder of close to six million Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War ...
• Snyder, Timothy (2012). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books. ISBN 9-780-4650-3297-6.
• Stone, Dan (2010). Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9-780-1995-6679-2. 'Holocaust' ... refers to the genocide of the Jews, which by no means excludes an understanding that other groups—notably Romanies and Slavs—were victims of genocide.

Other websites

• The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Jewish Virtual Library
• Paulsson, Steve. "A View of the Holocaust". BBC. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
• "Introduction to the Holocaust". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 2011-02-18. Retrieved 2011-02-20.