What Was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.
Reliable Internet Resources
- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, including its Holocaust Encyclopedia
- Yad Vashem
- USC Shoah Foundation
- Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution
- The Wiener Library
- Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (more than 4,400 testimonies comprising 12,000 recorded hours of videotape)
- From Numbers to Names – Explore Holocaust photo and video archives through AI.
- #LastSeen Image Atlas – Images of the Nazi deportations
- The World Society of Częstochowa Jews and Their Descendants
- Jewish Records Indexing – Poland – Safeguards the evidence of the 1,000-year-old Jewish presence in current and former territories of Poland
Holocaust Remembrance Days
There are two main Holocaust Remembrance Days :
- Yom Hashoah, designated by Israel. Yom Hashoah marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
- International Holocaust Remembrance Day designated by the United Nations (UN). International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the liberation of Auschwitz.
Holocaust Timelines
- Timeline of Events, US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Timeline, Yad Vashem
- Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933–1945, Museum of Tolerance
- Events in the history of the Holocaust, The Wiener Holocaust Library
Books
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer
- Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933–1939 by Saul Friedlander
- Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 2: The Years of Extermination 1939–1945 by Saul Friedlander
- The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone – New York Times Review
Films
- Schindler’s List
- Shoah
- Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide
Podcasts
- On the Holocaust – a Yad Vashem Podcast
- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Podcasts and Audio
- The Holocaust History Podcast
- Those Who Were There Podcast Series
- Mémoires de la Shoah (en français)
- EHRI Podcast | For the Living and the Dead. Traces of the Holocaust – Apple Podcasts
‘The program of action against the Jews included disenfranchisement, stigmatization, denial of civil rights, subjecting their persons and property to violence, deportation, enslavement, enforced labour, starvation, murder, and mass extermination. The extent to which the conspirators succeeded in their purpose can only be estimated, but the annihilation was substantially complete in many localities of Europe. Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only remnants of the Jewish population of Europe remain.’
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946 (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947), vol. 1, 34.
Last updated: November 24, 2024
