Introduction to the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder, bureaucratic, state-sponsored six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning sacrifice by fire Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were racially superior and that the Jews, considered inferior, were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
During the time of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their racial inferiority of the Roma Gypsies, the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples Poles Russians, and other perceived D other groups were persecuted on political, ideological and behavioral between Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's witnesses and homosexuals.
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 in 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of three European Jews as part of the final solution, the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.
Although the Jews, the Nazis interpreted as a priority threat 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 Program euthanasia.
As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect or mistreatment the Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland where these people worked and often died under deplorable conditions.
In the early years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms targeted German police officers thousands of political opponents, including communists, socialists and union and religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses Many of these people have died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.
During the early years of Nazi National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents more and more in the years preceding the outbreak of the war, SS and police incarcerated Jews, Roma and other victims of ethnic and racial minorities hatred in these camps.
To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population and to facilitate the subsequent expulsion of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos and labor camps forced transit camps for Jews during the war years, the German authorities have also established numerous labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich and occupied by the Germans, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.
After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass murder operations against Jews , Roma and Soviet officials and the German Communist Party SS units and police state, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women and children, and hundreds of thousands more.
Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, the occupied territories, and countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and killing centers often called extermination camps, where they were killed in the gassing installations specially developed.
In the last months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called death marches in an attempt to prevent the release ally of many prisoners that the Allied forces crossed Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate the prisoners of the concentration camp and the prisoners en route by forced March to one another camp marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe the next day, May 8, V-E Day, while Soviet forces announced their Victory Day, May 9, 1945.
Following the Holocaust, most survivors have taken refuge in IDP DP camps administered by the Allied powers between 1948 and 1951, nearly 700,000 Jews have emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 displaced Jews of Europe other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other countries The last DP camp closed in 1957.
The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities throughout the occupied Eastern Europe.
Bergen, Doris War Genocide A concise history of the Holocaust Lanham, MD Rowman Littlefield, 2003.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S war against the Jews, 1933-1945 New York Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Gilbert, Martin Holocaust A history of European Jews during World War II in New York Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986.
Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust editor in New York Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990.
Hilberg, Raul Destruction of the European Jews New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 2003.
Yahil Leni The Holocaust The fate of the Jews of Europe, 1932-1945 New York Oxford University Press, 1990.
Introduction to the Holocaust, Holocaust Germans their employees, Holt Rinehart Winston.