The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. The European Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust. But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis.
How many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust?
While it is impossible to ascertain the exact number of Jewish victims, statistics indicate that the total was over 5,830,000. Six million is the round figure accepted by most authorities.
Nazi is a short term for the National Socialist German Workers Party, a right-wing political party formed in 1919 primarily by unemployed German veterans of World War 1. Adolf Hitler became head of the party in 1921, and under his leadership the party eventually became a powerful political force in German elections by the early 1930's. The Nazi party ideology was largely based on nationalism and racism. They promoted Germany as superior to all other nations and promised to restore it to greatness, while championing a scientific theory of racism, in which the Aryan (German) people were racially superior to all others. In 1933, Hitler assumed power in Germany and he ended German democracy and severely restricted basic rights, such as freedom of speech, press, and assembly. He established a brutal dictatorship through a reign of terror.
The Jews are a diverse religious and cultural group whose origins are described in the Bible. The term Jewish is not a race in any sense of the word, since there are no physical characteristics that can be defined as Jewish. A Jew is any person whose mother was a Jew or any person who has gone through the formal process of religious conversion to Judaism.
Who did the Nazis define as Jews?
Immediately following the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, the Nazis issued the official definition of a Jew. According to German law, anyone with three Jewish grandparents was a Jew, as was anyone with two Jewish grandparents. In addition, anyone married to a Jewish person or who had one Jewish parent was also considered a Jew in the eyes of the law.
When was the first concentration camp established?
Dachau was the first concentration camp established and was opened on March 22, 1933. The camp's first inmates were primarily political prisoners (Communists or Social Democrats), habitual criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and anti-socials (beggars, vagrants, hawkers). Others considered problematic by the Nazis were also included (Jewish writers and journalists, lawyers, unpopular industrialists, and political officials).
What is a death camp? How many were there? Where were they located?
A death camp camp is a concentration camp with special apparatus especially designed for mass murder. Six such camps existed: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Tremblinka. All were located in Poland.
Auschwitz-Birkenau became the killing centre where the largest numbers of European Jews were killed. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941 of 850 malnourished and ill prisoners, mass murder became a daily routine. By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B began at Auschwitz, where extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running as high as three million persons eventually killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning.
How did the Nazis carry out their policy of genocide?
In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units following in the wake of the German Army began shooting massive numbers of Jews and Gypsies in open fields and ravines on the outskirts of conquered cities and towns. Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and organized method of killing. Six extermination centers were established in occupied Poland where large-scale murder by gas and body disposal through cremation were conducted systematically. Victims were deported to these centers from Western Europe and from the ghettos in Eastern Europe which the Nazis had established. In addition, millions died in the ghettos and concentration camps as a result of forced labor, starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, and execution.
Zyclon-B was the poison used to murder millions of Nazi victims. It was dropped in crystal form, through a small hole in the ceiling, into the gas chambers. The pellets turned into a lethal gas once in air. Previous to its use in gas chambers, Zyklon-B was a common insecticide.
What does the term Final Solution mean?
The term Final Solution (Die Endlosung) refers to the Germans’ plan to physically liquidate all Jews in Europe. The term was used at the Wannsee Conference held in Berlin on January 20, 1942, where German officials discussed its implementation.
How many Jews were murdered in each country?
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Holocaust Deaths |
||
|
Country/Region |
Low Estimate |
High Estimate |
|
Germany (1938 Borders) |
125,000 |
130,000 |
|
Austria |
58,0000 |
65,000 |
|
Belgium & Luxembourg |
24,700 |
29,000 |
|
Bulgaria |
0 |
7,000 |
|
Czechoslovakia |
245,000 |
277,000 |
|
France |
64,000 |
83,000 |
|
Greece |
58,000 |
65,000 |
|
Hungary & Ukraine |
300,000 |
402,000 |
|
Italy |
7,500 |
8,000 |
|
Netherlands |
101,800 |
106,000 |
|
Norway |
677 |
760 |
|
Poland & USSR |
3,700,000 |
4,565,000 |
|
Romania |
40,000 |
220,000 |
|
Yugoslavia |
54,000 |
60,000 |
|
TOTAL |
4,778,677 |
6,017,760 |
|
Source: Nizkor Project statistics derived from Yad Vashem and Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution. |
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How many children were murdered during the Holocaust?
The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.
How did the world respond to the Holocaust?
The world outside Nazi Europe received numerous press reports in the 1930s about the persecution of Jews. By 1942 the governments of the United States and Great Britain had confirmed reports about the Final Solution - Germany's intent to kill all the Jews of Europe. However, influenced by antisemitism and fear of a massive influx of refugees, neither country modified their refugee politics. No specific attempts to stop or slow the genocide were made until mounting pressure eventually forced the United States to undertake limited rescue efforts in 1944. In Europe, rampant antisemitism incited citizens of many German-occupied countries to collaborate with the Nazis in their genocidal policies. There were, however, individuals and groups in every occupied nation who, at great personal risk, helped hide those targeted by the Nazis. One nation, Denmark, saved most of its Jews in a nighttime rescue operation in 1943 in which Jews were ferried in fishing boats to safety in neutral Sweden.
Jan Karski was a Polish resistance hero and the man who first told the world about the horrors of the Holocaust. After a very dangerous journey he brought his story to the West, briefing political and religious leaders in London and then in July 1943 met personally with President Franklin Roosevelt. However, Karski was unable to convince them to take military action against death camp targets. President Roosevelt in the US, and even prominent American Jewish leaders, all listened politely, but all were disinclined to believe Jan Karski's gruesome narrative of mass murder in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the extermination camps. Their first priority remained the defeat of the Third Reich, rather than the rescue of European Jewry. The slaughter went on.
Sources
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center Online
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