The Holocaust

The Nazis established around 44,000 concentration camps, death camps, and ghettos in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe and North Africa during World War II.^[22][23]

 

By mid-1941, the Nazis had forced almost all Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland into ghettos.^[24] The largest of these was the Warsaw Ghetto. In November 1940, the Nazis forced 380,000 Jews into the ghetto and locked them in. Over 80,000 of them died from starvation, overcrowding, disease, freezing to death, and other terrible conditions.^[25] The second largest, the Lodz Ghetto, held around 210,000 people in total.^[26] In this ghetto, more than one in every five people died from the terrible living conditions.^[26] According to Leo Schneiderman, who survived the Lodz Ghetto: "The whole ghetto was designed, actually, to starve the people out."^[26]

 

There were 23 main concentration camps and hundreds of sub-camps throughout the lands that Nazi Germany controlled.^[27] According to Karin Orth in the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos: 1933-1945, as many as one thousand camps may have operated at a time.^[28] The Nazis used concentration camps for many purposes: to gather and isolate the Nazis' "enemies"; to punish and torture these "enemies"; to obtain forced labor; to steal victims' belongings on a massive scale; to perform medical experiments on prisoners; and to kill people.^[23][29]

Major concentration camps included:^[30]

• Auschwitz I and III (parts of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex)
• Bergen-Belsen (where Anne Frank died)
• Buchenwald
• Dachau (the first Nazi concentration camp)
• Mauthausen
• Ravensbruck (a women's camp)
• Sachsenhausen

 

The Nazis established six death camps in Poland. Their sole purpose was to kill Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible.^[23]

The death camps were:^[31]

• Auschwitz-Birkenau (a part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex)
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek
• Sobibor
• Treblinka

Special Schutzstaffel (SS) units like the Einsatzgruppen killed hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of Jews at a time in mass shootings.^[32] Sometimes they forced Jews and other prisoners to dig giant holes in the ground where, after days of hard work, they were shot. Their bodies were buried and burned in mass graves.

 

At Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine, Einsatzgruppen killed 33,771 Jews in two days (between 29-30 September 1941).^[33] The Nazis continued to use Babi Yar for mass executions of Jews, Soviet prisoners or war, and Roma people throughout the war.^[32] As many as 100,000 people may have died there.^[32]

The Nazis first used gas chambers to kill people as part of their T4 Project (Aktion T4).^[34] The Nazis believed in eugenics and thought that people with disabilities, chronically ill people, and many elderly people were "useless eaters."^[34] To eliminate these people, the Nazis sent them to killing centers like Hartheim Killing Facility, where they murdered them in gas chambers.^[34]

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,^[34]

The murder of the [disabled] was a precursor to the Holocaust. The killing centres to which the [disabled] were transported were the antecedents of the extermination camps, and their organized transportation foreshadowed mass deportation. Some of the physicians who became specialists in the technology of cold-blooded murder in the late 1930s later staffed the death camps. They had long since lost all their moral, professional, and ethical inhibitions.

When they first used poison gas to kill Jews, the Nazis used gas vans that piped carbon monoxide into the passenger compartment. Soon, though, the Nazis built permanent gas chambers where they killed up to 2000 people at a time.^[19] By 1942 the Nazi's main method of murdering people in concentration camps was to kill them in gas chambers with Zyklon-B.^[35] This was a rat poison which contained cyanide. In a planned, organized, and methodical way, they deported trains full of people to the extermination camps and sent them straight to the gas chambers. The Nazis killed around 1.1 million people in concentration camp gas chambers using Zyklon-B.^[35]

The Nazis executed many people by shooting, stabbing, or beating them to death. Some people survived beatings, but suffered broken bones and/or died when their wounds got infected.^[36] Many people also died in forced marches from one camp to another. Some were killed in medical experiments by SS doctors like Josef Mengele. Others were worked to death.^[37][38]

The Nazis also deliberately killed prisoners in some concentration camps by treating them so terribly that many died.^[38] They forced prisoners to do hard forced labor, but fed them very little (about 25%^[39] of the calories needed to survive).^[40][41] In the winter, prisoners did not have warm clothing or heating, and many froze to death.^[39] Others developed frostbite, which sometimes worsened into gangrene.^[36]

Diseases spread quickly in the camps because there was no healthcare, no sanitation, and a lot of overcrowding. Lice were everywhere, and they spread typhus, which was "ever-present, both endemic and epidemic, [and] fatal".^[39] Other illnesses were common, including tuberculosis, malaria, meningitis, scabies, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases.^[36] Prisoners who were too sick or injured to work were often killed.

The Nazis killed around 6 million Jews^[14][15] and 5 million others^[42] during the Holocaust. However, not all deaths were written down, so it is impossible to know the exact number of deaths.

Nearly two out of every three Jews in Europe were killed in the Holocaust.^[21] This included around 3 million Polish Jews.^[43][44] The Holocaust killed almost all of the Jewish children in Europe. Before World War II, there were about 1.6 million Jewish children living in the lands that the Nazis would soon control. Only 6% to 11% of them survived World War II; between 1 million and 1.5 million died.^[45] (The adult survival rate was at least three times higher: 33%.^[45]) Most European Jews had already been killed by 1943 before the Allies received reliable reports of the mass extermination.^[46] As per the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM),^[42]

• 2.7 million Jews were killed at death camps
• 2 million Jews were killed in mass shootings and other massacres
• 800,000 to 1 million Jews were killed in ghettos, forced labor camps and concentration camps
• 250,000 Jews were killed in other acts of violence, including tortures, pogroms, death marches etc.

The approximate proportions of Jews killed are as follows.

• 90% of Jews in Poland^[47]
• 83–87% of Jews in Greece^[48]
• 81% of Jews in Yugoslavian territories occupied by the Independent State of Croatia^[49]
• 75% of Jews in the Netherlands^[46]
• 68% of Jews in Hungary^[50]
• 66% of Jews in Belgium^[46]
• 53% of Jews in Romania^[51]
• 33% of Jews in France^[46]

As per the USHMM, other victims of Nazi genocide included:^[42]

• 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war
• 1.8 million non-Jewish ethnic Poles
• 250,000 to 500,000 Roma people
• 310,000 Serb civilians murdered by Ustaša authorities of the Independent State of Croatia
• 250,000 to 300,000 people with disabilities living in institutions and care facilities (including at least 10,000 children)
• 35,000 Germans imprisoned as "professional criminals" and "asocials"
• Tens of thousands of German people who criticized or opposed the Nazi regime
• 1,700 Jehovah's Witnesses
• Hundreds, possibly thousands, of men accused of homosexuality
• Dozens of Black people

For hundreds of years before the Holocaust, there had been hatred and persecution of Jews (antisemitism) in Europe.^[52] Many people wrongly thought that all Jews became rich by stealing money from others, like Christians.^[53] Many believed Jews only liked other Jews.^[53] Since at least the 2nd century BC, people have made accusations of blood libel - accusing Jews of harming children to use their blood for religious rituals.^[54]

 

These beliefs were not true and were based on stereotypes and prejudices. However, these beliefs were popular in the German-speaking world and elsewhere in the late 1800s.^[53]

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria during this time, when many people disliked Jews. He may have been jealous of Jewish success in Austria. However, in his book Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), he said it was the Jews' fault that Germany and Austria lost World War I.^[55] He also said Germany's economic problems were the Jews' fault.^[55] Many people agreed with Hitler’s ideas and supported him as the leader of the Nazi Party.^[56][57]

On the other hand, there were people who saved Jews during the Holocaust because they thought it was the right thing to do. Some of them were later given "Righteous Among the Nations" awards by Yad Vashem.^[58]

Some people say the Holocaust did not happen at all,^[59] or was not as bad as historians say it was. This is called Holocaust denial. However, historians agree that the Holocaust did happen and has been described correctly.^[60] Many Holocaust deniers say that the Nazis did not kill so many people. Instead, they claim many of these people died because they were ill or didn't have enough to eat. But historical accounts, eyewitness evidence, and documentary evidence from the Nazis themselves clearly prove that the ideas of Holocaust deniers are not true. Jews were killed because Hitler ordered it. In Germany^[61] and some other countries, it is against the law to say that the Holocaust never happened.^[62]

• Jews
• Nazism
• Pogrom
• Babi Yar
• Genocide
• Nazi Party
• Adolf Hitler
• Iași pogrom
• Death camp
• Kristallnacht
• Mein Kampf
• World War II
• Nazi Germany
• Ion Antonescu
• Einsatzgruppen
• Dehumanization
• Extermination camp
• Genocidal massacre
• Holocaust Encyclopedia
• Nazi concentration camp
• Odessa massacre (1941)
• Jedwabne pogrom (1941)
• Righteous Among the Nations
• List of Nazi concentration camps
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

• Sheehan, Sean (2007). The Holocaust (How Did It Happen?). Franklin Watts. ISBN 978-0-7496-7723-7.

• The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Jewish Virtual Library
• Paulsson, Steve. "A View of the Holocaust". BBC. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
• "Introduction to the Holocaust". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 2011-02-18. Retrieved 2011-02-20.