The Holocaust: Roots
The Nazi state and its collaborators used its bureaucracy to systematically kill six million Jews. The massacre came to be referred as the Holocaust. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were a grave threat to the claimed community of racially-pure Germans.
The Nazi state and its collaborators used its bureaucracy to systematically kill six million Jews. The massacre came to be referred as the Holocaust. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were a grave threat to the claimed community of racially-pure Germans.
Violence was also done on people considered as racially inferior, such as the Gypsies (Roma), the disabled, and Slavs. Other groups persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioural grounds include Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.
But discrimination towards the Jews did not start with the German Nazis. There is a long history of persecution against the Jews dating back to the Middle Ages, particularly in the Russian Empire when the Czar administration targeted the Jewish population in Ukraine and Belarus. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century further strengthened anti-semitic feelings. This widespread social program emphasized on bettering society through selective breeding and forced sterilization of groups deemed unworthy of reproducing.
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The Nazis took the discrimination a step further by not only treating the Jews as religiously and culturally alien but as biologically different. The highlight of the official government program of persecution came in September 1935 with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. These laws revoked German citizenship for Jews, prohibited Jews from having sexual relations with or marrying a German, and defined a Jew as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. This was important because it moved the definition of Jewish from its traditional idea of religion or culture to one of biology, and it meant that Germans of Jewish ancestry who did not practice Judaism or follow the cultural norms of Judaism, or even those who had converted to a form of Christianity, now found themselves as targets of state-sponsored persecution. As 1937 rolled in, the state continued to increase its official pressure on Jews in Germany by stripping them of their rights to operate public businesses and by forcing them to register their personal property with state authorities. Starting 1938, Jewish passports were declared invalid, and Jews were forced to apply for new passports that bore a large J.
The key event of 1938 occurred over the night of November 9–10, a seemingly spontaneous outburst of anti-Jewish violence across Germany that became known popularly as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass. Over the course of the night, Jewish businesses had their storefront windows smashed and were looted, synagogues were attacked and burned as were private residences of Jews, and Jews on the streets were beaten by mobs. The state arrested over 30,000 Jews across the nation and deported them to state-sponsored camps such as the ones at Dachau and Buchenwald, where many would be killed through brutal mistreatment.
“Final Solution”
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps for opponents. With the outbreak of the war, however, they started holding up victims of ethnic and racial hatred.
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps for opponents. With the outbreak of the war, however, they started holding up victims of ethnic and racial hatred.
To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years.
Following 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 state and Communist Party officials.
Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities.
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The End of Holocaust
In the final 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 Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
In the final 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 Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
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In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957.