Scribd
Upload
41 views1 page

The Holocaust (From The

The Holocaust was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945. An additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders are also included in the total death count of around eleven million people. The Holocaust involved the oppression and systematic murder of Jews as well as other groups by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. Jewish armed resistance did occur throughout Europe in response to the Holocaust, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

Uploaded by

Alessandro Batti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
41 views1 page

The Holocaust (From The

The Holocaust was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945. An additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders are also included in the total death count of around eleven million people. The Holocaust involved the oppression and systematic murder of Jews as well as other groups by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. Jewish armed resistance did occur throughout Europe in response to the Holocaust, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

Uploaded by

Alessandro Batti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

The Holocaust

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"),[2]
also known as the Shoah (Hebrew: ‫השואה‬, HaShoah, "the catastrophe"), was a genocide in which
approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. An additional
five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders are included by some historians bringing the
total to approximately eleven million. Killings took place throughout Nazi Germany and German-
occupied territories.[3][4]

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were targeted and methodically murdered in a genocide, the largest in
modern history, and part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic
and political groups in Europe by the Nazis.[5] Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in
the logistics of the genocide, turning the Third Reich into "a genocidal state".[6] Non-Jewish victims
of broader Nazi crimes include Gypsies, Poles, communists, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and the
mentally and physically disabled. In total, approximately 11 million people were killed, including
one million Jewish children alone.[7][8] Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before
the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.[9] A network of about 42,500 facilities in
Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate, confine, and kill Jews and
other victims.[10] Between 100,000 and 500,000 people were direct participants in the planning and
execution of the Holocaust.[11]

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Initially the German government passed
laws to exclude Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. A network
of concentration camps was established starting in 1933 and ghettos were established following the
outbreak of World War II in 1939. In 1941, as Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe,
specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen were used to murder around two million Jews
and "partisans", often in mass shootings. By the end of 1942, victims were being regularly
transported by freight train to specially built extermination camps where, if they survived the
journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. The campaign of murder continued until
the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945.

Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis occurred throughout the Holocaust. One notable example was
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of January 1943, when thousands of poorly armed Jewish fighters held
the SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought the
Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe.[12][13] French Jews were also highly active in the
French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French
authorities. In total, there were over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.

You might also like