The Holocaust

Concentration Camps

Before beginning the war in 1939, the Nazis established concentration camps to imprison Jews, Roma and other victims of thick and racial hatred and political opponents of nazism.

Extermination Camps

Between 1942 and 1943, Nazi Germany deported millions of Jews from the occupied territories to extermination camps, where they murdered them in specially developed killing facilities

End of Holocaust

Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,00 Jews immigrated to Israel, including more than two thirds of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe. Others immigrated to the aunties States and other nations.

What else was created

During the war years, the Nazis and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps and forced- labor camps

End of WWII

Ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German armed forces on May 8, 1945.

Einsatzgruppen

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941,Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass murder operations. More than a million Jewish men, women and children were murder years these units

History behind the word Holocaust

Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrafise by fire"

Jewish population stood at over

In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over 9 million

When did the last DP camp close

In 1957

Death Marches

In the final months of the war, SS guards forced camp inmates on death marches in an attempt to prevent Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners

Aftermath

Many of the survivors found shelter in displaced prisons (DP) camps administered by Allied Powers

How were other groups persecuted

Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among the communists, Socialist, Jehovah's witnesses and homosexuals

Other targets

The Nazis also targeted other groups because their perceived "racial inferiority". Roma (Gypsies), handicapped, Slavic people, (Poles, Russians and others)

Superior vs. Inferior

The nazis who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and Jews were "racially inferior and were "life unworthy of life".

What was the Holocaust?

The symematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Liberation

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 march.

How many mentally and physically disabled were murdered?

At least 200,000 mentally and physically disabled were murdered in the Euthanasia Program.