What was the Holocaust?

Answer 1

The Holocaust The Holocaust (with a capital H) refers to the genocide (mass murder) of about six million Jews by the Nazis in 1941-1945 (during World War 2). It was the so-called Final Solution [of the Jewish Question].

The term is often used in a broader sense to include millions of others also killed by the Nazis on the basis of group identity. See the related question on target and victims for details of other groups.

''The Holocaust Encyclopedia'', published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states:

'The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators'.

It goes on to say that at the same time: German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

In the Holocaust (1941-1945) the aim was the total genocide (murder, destruction) of the Jews.

The Jews in Germany were subject to growing persecution by the Nazis since the latter came to power in 1933. From 1938 onwards Hitler extended German control over a large part of Europe, especially after the invasion of Poland in 1939. In the process, the number of Jews under Nazi rule grew rapidly.

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, special death squads (the ''SD-Einsatzgruppen - mobile killing units'') moved in and carried out mass open air killings of Jews, one of the most notorious being at Babi Yar where about 33,500 Jews were slaughtered.

In 1941-42 extermination camps were established by the Nazis in Poland. The following camps existed solely for the purpose of exterminating (usually by gassing):

• Auschwitz (part of the Birkenau section)
• Chelmno (Kulmhof)
• Belzec
• Sobibor
• Treblinka
• Majdanek (part only; the rest was a very harsh concentration camp) * Maly Trostinets (in Belarus) * Bronnaya Gora (in Belarus)

  Auschwitz became the most notorious camp of all. Part of it existed purely for the purpose of gassing victims. Others were worked to death on grossly inadequate food. There were frequent outbreaks of typhus in the labor camps. Some died from quack medical 'experiments'.

  Two of Germany's Axis allies, Romania and the puppet state of Croatia, conducted their own Holocausts - often using heavy, blunt instruments instead of gas.

  The Allies, though fighting against Germany, did not undertake any action designed specifically to stop the genocide.

And More About the Holocaust The Holocaust was the period of oppression, incarceration, exploitation and annihilation that was initiated and executed by Nazi Germany and some other Axis countries against people of the Jewish race between 1939 and 1945.

The Holocaust was the attempt to exterminate all the Jews in Europe. This attempt at genocide killed more than 6 million Jews and 5 million others, mainly in death camps, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka and mass open air shootings.

The perpetrators of the horrors that took place during the Holocaust were the Nazis and their allies. Actually, to be able to fully understand what the Holocaust was, I suggest you check out some of the related links listed below.

The holocaust was the inhuman, mass murder of the Jewish race in German-occupied Europe.

This is just a short explanation of the Holocaust. I have not even begun to explain the horrors. I would encourage you to learn more about it by reading two of my favorite books: Alicia My Story by Alicia Appleman Jurman, or All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein.

It was when Hitler went made with power it stared with speech ended in killing Jews

The Holocaust is also known as The Shoah and was the genocide or mass murder of approx. 6million Jews during World War 2. It was a programme of systematic state sponsored murder of Jews by Adolph Hitlers Nazi Party.

Over 9 million Jews were sent to Concentration Camps where they were subjected to slave labour (many died from exhaustion or disease) or sent to gas chambers at extermination camps.

Of these nine million approx. two thirds were killed.