History of the Holocaust

ٌٌاWhat is Holocaust? "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."

The Holocaust refers to a specific genocidal event in twentieth-century history: the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and mass murder on a scale unprecedented in human history  and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945 (See Holocaust Timeline).

The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "life unworthy of life."  Jews were the primary victims—6 million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny. (See Evidence / Documents)

In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population at that time, estimated at 15.3 million. Most European Jews lived in countries that the Third Reich would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, close to two out of every three European Jews had been killed as part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.

The majority of Jews in prewar Europe resided in Eastern Europe. The largest Jewish communities in this area were in Poland, with about 3 million Jews; the European part of the Soviet Union, with over 2 million   See table 1, showing number of Jewish population before the war and  pre war and after war ry with 445,000, Czechoslovakia with 357,000, and Austria with 250,000. In western Europe the largest Jewish communities were in Great Britain, with 300,000 Jews; France, with 220,000; and the Netherlands, with 160,000. In southern Europe, Greece had the largest Jewish population, with about 73,000 Jews. There were also significant Jewish communities in Yugoslavia (70,000), Italy (48,000), and Bulgaria (50,000).

Before the Nazis seized power in 1933, Europe had a dynamic and highly developed Jewish culture. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and the majority European Jews--two out of every three--would be dead.

Before beginning the war in 1939, the Nazis established concentration camps to imprison Jews, Roma, other victims of ethnic and racial hatred, and political opponents of Nazism. During the war years, the Nazis and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist party officials. More than a million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by these units. Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany deported millions more Jews from the occupied territories to extermination camps, where they murdered them in specially developed killing facilities.

In the final months of the war, SS guards forced camp inmates on death marches in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived the death marches. World War II ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German armed forces in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including more than two-thirds of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe. Others emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities.