This page describes painful events in a respectful and sober tone. It contains no graphic imagery.
The Holocaust
Documenting the systematic genocide
Defining the Holocaust
The Holocaust (in Hebrew: "Shoah," meaning "catastrophe") is the systematic genocide planned and executed by the Nazi regime under Hitler against European Jews and other groups between 1933 and 1945. It culminated in the murder of six million Jews — two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population — through systematic operations including mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps.
The Victims
Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust; six million were murdered. Additionally, the Nazi genocide killed:
- 200,000–500,000 Roma (Gypsies)
- 200,000–250,000 people with physical or mental disabilities
- 1.8–3 million Soviet POWs
- 1.8–2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians
- 80,000–200,000 political opponents and intellectuals
- 10,000+ gay, bisexual, and transgender people
Timeline of Persecution
1933–1938
Legal Marginalization and Persecution
The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of civil rights and German citizenship. Discriminatory measures proliferated: bans on employment, property confiscation, forced identification markers.
November 9–10, 1938
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
An organized two-night pogrom targeting Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria. 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps.
1939–1941
Ghettoization and Forced Deportation
Following the invasion of Poland and Eastern Europe, Jews were forced into overcrowded ghettos in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, and dozens of other cities. Conditions were deliberately engineered to cause mass deaths through disease and starvation.
From June 1941
Mobile Killing Units — Einsatzgruppen
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, mobile killing units executed over 2 million people — mostly Jews — in mass shootings at burial pits. The Babi Yar massacre near Kiev killed 33,771 Jews in two days.
From 1942
Extermination Camps and Zyklon B
Nazis built purpose-built extermination camps equipped with gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec, Chełmno, and Majdanek. Auschwitz-Birkenau could kill over 10,000 people daily.
1944–1945
Liberation of the Camps
Allied — Soviet, British, and American — forces liberated concentration and extermination camps in horrifying discoveries. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz in January 1945. Allied forces witnessed the conditions of thousands of survivors and gathered evidence that formed the basis of Nuremberg prosecutions.
Further Resources
As a matter of historical and educational responsibility, the leader profile page for the Third Reich's leader links directly to this page as a constant reminder of the enormous human cost of racist and totalitarian ideologies.