The Holocaust

The Holocaust was perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its allies during the Second World War (1939-1945). It began with the spread of racist, antisemitic ideology, the confiscation of property and the suspension of the Jews’ civil rights. It continued with efforts to carry out the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” It was an unprecedented, calculated, systematically planned and mechanized genocide, whose purpose was to wipe an entire people off the face of the earth. Approximately six million Jews, including around one and a half million children, were murdered in ghettos, slave labor camps, killing fields, forests, and concentration and extermination camps. Thousands of communities were destroyed along with their material and spiritual treasures. The Nazis also killed millions of gypsies, homosexuals, persons with physical and mental disabilities, citizens of the countries they occupied, political dissidents and prisoners of war. However, the annihilation machine that was deployed to eradicate the Jews had no parallel in history.