Victims of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστον (Holókauston): holos, "whole" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, Latinized ha'shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Latinized churben or hurban^[1]) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, its allies, and collaborators.^[2] Shoah may refer to a number of things: Shoah or Ha Shoah (literally denoting a catastrophic upheaval) is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust. ... Victim was the title of a British film made in 1961, directed by Basil Deardon and starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Simms. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Yiddish ( yidish or idish, literally: Jewish) is a non-territorial Germanic language, spoken throughout the world and written with the Hebrew alphabet. ... For other uses, see Genocide (disambiguation). ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ...   (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933, and Führer (leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. ... Black: Zenith of the Axis Powers Capital Not applicable Political structure Military alliance Historical era World War II  - Tripartite Pact September 27, 1940  - Anti-Comintern Pact November 25, 1936  - Pact of Steel May 22, 1939  - Dissolved 1945 This article is about the independent countries (states) that comprised the Axis powers. ...

Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including Catholics, ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents.^[3] By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims would be between 11 million and 17 million people.^[4] The Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination of Christianity with over one billion members. ... This article details the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against ethnic Poles during World War II. 3 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, most of them civilians, killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. ... Roma arrivals in the Belzec extermination camp await instructions The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) literally Devouring, or Samudaripen (Mass killing) is a term coined by the Roma (Gypsy) people to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of the Roma peoples of Europe during The Holocaust. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This poster reads: 60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community during his lifetime. ... Autobiography of Pierre Seel, a gay man sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis Before the beginning of World War II, the homosexual people in Germany, especially in Berlin, enjoyed more freedom and acceptance than anywhere else in the world. ... The victims of the Holocaust were Jews, Serbs, Poles, Russians, Communists, homosexuals, Roma (also known as gypsies), the mentally ill and the physically disabled, intelligentsia and political activists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Roman Catholics, and Protestant clergy, trade unionists, psychiatric patients, some Africans, Asians, enemy nationals especially Spanish refugees from occupied... The victims of the Holocaust were Jews, Serbs, Poles, Russians, Communists, homosexuals, Roma (also known as gypsies), the mentally ill and the physically disabled, intelligentsia and political activists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Roman Catholics, and Protestant clergy, trade unionists, psychiatric patients, some Africans, Asians, enemy nationals especially Spanish refugees from occupied...

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal state".^[5] The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. ... Piles of bodies in a liberated Nazi concentration camp in Germany Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany under Hitler maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager, abbreviated KZ or KL) throughout the territories it controlled. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... Extermination camps were two types of facilities that Nazi Germany built during World War II for the systematic killing of millions of people in what has become known as the Holocaust. ... For other uses, see Gas chamber (disambiguation). ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ...

Etymology and use of the term

The term holocaust originally derived from the Greek word holókauston, meaning a " whole (holos) burnt (kaustos)" sacrificial offering to a god.^[6] Its Latin form (holocaustum) was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jews by the chroniclers Roger of Howden^[7] and Richard of Devizes in the 1190s. For hundreds of years, the word holocaust was used in English to denote massive sacrifices and great slaughters or massacres. During World War II, the word was used to describe Nazi atrocities regardless of whether the victims were Jews or non-Jews. Since the 1960s, the term has come to be used by scholars and popular writers to refer exclusively to the genocide of Jews.^[2] There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe and went on to achievements of great fame and notability. ... This is a list of victims of Nazism who were noted for their achievements. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy. ... // The Holocaust is the name commonly applied since the mid 1970s to the systematic state-sponsored persecution and genocide of various ethnic, religious and political groups during World War II by Nazi Germany, and especially to the destruction of European Jewry. ... A holocaust is a religious sacrifice that is completely consumed by fire. ... For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... Richard I (September 8, 1157 – April 6, 1199) was King of England and ruler of the Angevin Empire from July 6, 1189 until his death. ... Roger of Hoveden, or Howden (fl. ... Richard of Devizes (fl. ...

The term entered common parlance after 1978, the year that the popular Holocaust (TV miniseries) was broadcast on the American NBC television network. With a cast of dozens, including a young Meryl Streep, this miniseries was sometimes accused of "trivializing" the concentration camps. However, the series proved that the subject matter could have popular appeal, as well as providing a convenient and enduring term.^[8] Holocaust was an Emmy Award-winning television miniseries broadcast in four parts in 1978 on the NBC television network. ...

The biblical word Shoah (שואה) (also spelled Sho'ah and Shoa), meaning "calamity," became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s.^[9] Shoah is preferred by many Jews for a number of reasons, including the theologically offensive nature of the word holocaust, as a Greek pagan custom.^[10] For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of and providing reasoned discourse of religion, spirituality and God or the gods. ...

Historical usage of Holocaust, Shoah, and Final Solution

The word holocaust has been used since the 18th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number of people.^[11] For example, Winston Churchill and other contemporaneous writers used it before World War II to describe the Armenian Genocide of World War I.^[12] Since the 1950s its use has increasingly been restricted, with its usage now mainly used as a proper noun to describe the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Churchill redirects here. ... Armenian Genocide photo. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ...

Holocaust was adopted as a translation of Shoah — a Hebrew word connoting catastrophe, calamity, disaster, and destruction^[13]— which was used in 1940 in Jerusalem in a booklet called Sho'at Yehudei Polin, and translated as The Holocaust of the Jews of Poland. Shoah had earlier been used in the context of the Nazis as a translation of catastrophe. For example, in 1934, when Chaim Weizmann told the Zionist Action Committee that Hitler's rise to power was an "unvorhergesehene Katastrophe, etwa ein neuer Weltkrieg" ("an unforeseen catastrophe, comparable to another world war"), the Hebrew press translated Katastrophe as Shoah.^[14] In the spring of 1942, the Jerusalem historian BenZion Dinur (Dinaburg) used Shoah in a book published by the United Aid Committee for the Jews in Poland to describe the extermination of Europe's Jews, calling it a "catastrophe" that symbolized the unique situation of the Jewish people.^[13][15] The word Shoah was chosen in Israel to describe the Holocaust, the term institutionalized by the Knesset on April 12, 1951, when it established Yom Ha-Shoah Ve Mered Ha-Getaot, the national day of remembrance. In the 1950s, Yad Vashem, the Israel "Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority" was routinely translating this into English as "the Disaster". At that time, holocaust was often used to mean the conflagration of much of humanity in a nuclear war.^[16] Since then, Yad Vashem has changed its practice; the word Holocaust, usually now capitalized, has come to refer principally to the genocide of the European Jews.^[9][14] For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ... Chaim Azriel Weizmann (Hebrew: חיים עזריאל ויצמן) November 27, 1874 – November 9, 1952) was a chemist, statesman, President of the World Zionist Organization, first President of Israel (elected February 1, 1949, served 1949 - 1952) and founder of a research institute in Israel that eventually became the Weizmann Institute of Science. ... A world war is a war affecting the majority of the worlds major nations. ... Type Unicameral Speaker of the Knesset Dalia Itzik, Kadima since May 4, 2006 Deputy Speaker Majalli Wahabi, Kadima since May 4, 2006 Members 120 Political groups Kadima Labour-Meimad Shas Likud Last elections March 28, 2006 Meeting place Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel Web site www. ... Yom haShoah VeHagvura or Yom HaShoah (יום השואה yom ha-sho’āh, יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה-Yom ha-zikaron la-Shoah vla-Gvura), or The Remembrance day of The Holocaust and the Heroism, takes place on the 27th day of Nisan, in the Hebrew calendar. ... The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ...

The usual German term for the extermination of the Jews during the Nazi period was the euphemistic phrase Endlösung der Judenfrage (the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"). In both English and German, "Final Solution" is widely used as an alternative to "Holocaust".^[17] For a time after World War II, German historians also used the term Völkermord ("genocide"), or in full, der Völkermord an den Juden ("the genocide of the Jewish people"), while the prevalent term in Germany today is either Holocaust or increasingly Shoah. A euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener;[1] or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ... This article is about the term with respect to the Jewish Question in World War II. For other uses, see Final Solution (disambiguation). ...

Use of the term Holocaust for Jewish and non-Jewish victims

While the terms "Shoah" and "Final Solution" always refer to the fate of the Jews during the Nazi rule, the term "Holocaust" is sometimes used in a wider sense to describe other genocides of the Nazi and other regimes. Languages Historical Jewish languages Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, others Liturgical languages: Hebrew and Aramaic Predominant spoken languages: The vernacular language of the home nation in the Diaspora, significantly including English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian Religions Judaism Related ethnic groups Arabs and other Semitic groups For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... For other uses, see Genocide (disambiguation). ...

The Columbia Encyclopedia defines "Holocaust" as "name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany".^[18] The Compact Oxford English Dictionary^[19] and Microsoft Encarta^[20] give similar definitions. The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines "Holocaust" as "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II".^[1] The Columbia Encyclopedia is a one-volume encyclopedia produced by Columbia University Press and sold by the Gale Group. ... The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a comprehensive multi-volume dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. ... Encarta Dictionary Technology (to be written) Encarta made use of various Microsoft technologies. ... ...

Scholars are divided on whether the term Holocaust should be applied to all victims of the Nazi mass murder campaign, with some using it synonymously with "Shoah" or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question", and others including the killing of Romani peoples (Roma and Sinti), Poles, the deaths of Soviet prisoners of war, Slavs, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and political opponents.^[21] This article is about the term with respect to the Jewish Question in World War II. For other uses, see Final Solution (disambiguation). ... Languages Romani, languages of native region Religions Christianity, Islam Related ethnic groups South Asians (Desi) The Romani people (as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies are an ethnic group living in many communities all over the world. ... Sinti or Sinte (Singular masc. ... The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик (СССР); tr. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ...

Yehuda Bauer contends that the Holocaust should include only Jews because it was the intent of the Nazis to exterminate all Jews, while the other groups were not to be totally annihilated.^[22] Besides Bauer,^[23] scholars Xu Xin,^[24] Ben Kiernan,^[25] Edward Kissi,^[26] Simone Veil,^[27] Monika Richarz,^[28] and Francis Deng^[29] refer solely to the destruction of the European Jewry when using the term "Holocaust". Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (born 1926) is an historian and scholar of the Holocaust. ... Benedict F. Kiernan (born 1953 in Melbourne, Australia) is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. ... Simone Veil Simone Veil (born Simone Annie Jacob, July 13, 1927) is a French lawyer and politician who currently serves as a member of the Constitutional Council of France. ... Francis Deng is Research Professor of International Law, Politics and Society and the Director of the Center for Displacement Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. ...

Inclusion of non-Jewish victims of the Nazis in the Holocaust is objected to by many persons including Elie Wiesel, and by organizations such as Yad Vashem established to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.^[30] They say that the word was originally meant to describe the extermination of the Jews, and that the Jewish Holocaust was a crime on such a scale, and of such totality and specificity, as the culmination of the long history of European antisemitism, that it should not be subsumed into a general category with the other crimes of the Nazis.^[30] Elie Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928)[1] is a writer, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. ... The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ... Antisemitism (alternatively spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism, also known as judeophobia) is prejudice and hostility toward Jews as a religious, racial, or ethnic group. ...

Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann maintain that although all Jews were victims, the Holocaust transcended the confines of the Jewish community - other people shared the tragic fate of victimhood.^[31] László Teleki applies the term "Holocaust" to both the murder of Jews and Romani peoples by the Nazis.^[32] Michael Burleigh is a British author and historian. ... Languages Historical Jewish languages Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, others Liturgical languages: Hebrew and Aramaic Predominant spoken languages: The vernacular language of the home nation in the Diaspora, significantly including English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian Religions Judaism Related ethnic groups Arabs and other Semitic groups For the Jewish religion, see Judaism. ... Languages Romani, languages of native region Religions Christianity, Islam Related ethnic groups South Asians (Desi) The Romani people (as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies are an ethnic group living in many communities all over the world. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ...

Sometimes, the term "Holocaust" is used to describe events that have no connection with World War II. According to David Stannard, the "American Holocaust" involved killing of an estimated 50-100 million aboriginal people, and continues on a smaller scale throughout the Americas. ^[33]The "Rwandan Holocaust" refers to the Rwanda genocide of 1994. The "Cambodian Holocaust" comprises the mass killings by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. "African Holocaust" describes the slave trade and the colonization of Africa, also known as the Maafa.^[34] Then there is the prospect of "Nuclear Armageddon", also known as "Nuclear Holocaust". Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... David Edward Stannard is a writer and professor of American stidies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. ... The Rwandan Genocide was a genocide of 937,000 Rwandan Tutsis and Hutu moderates at the hands of Hutu militias and the Hutu-dominated government. ... Flag of Democratic Kampuchea The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ) was the ruling political party of Cambodia—which it renamed the Democratic Kampuchea—from 1975 to 1979. ... Map showing European claimants to the African continent in 1913. ... The word Maafa (also known as the African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement) is derived from a Kiswahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. ... Nuclear Holocaust is the concept of the eradication of the human race through the means of Nuclear warfare. ...

Distinctive features

Compliance of Germany's institutions

Ghettos were established in Europe in which Jews were confined before being shipped to extermination camps.

Michael Berenbaum writes that Germany became a "genocidal state."^[5] Every arm of the country's sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process. Parish churches and the Interior Ministry supplied birth records showing who was Jewish; the Post Office delivered the deportation and denaturalization orders; the Finance Ministry confiscated Jewish property; German firms fired Jewish workers and disenfranchised Jewish stockholders; the universities refused to admit Jews, denied degrees to those already studying, and fired Jewish academics; government transport offices arranged the trains for deportation to the camps; German pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on camp prisoners; companies bid for the contracts to build the crematoria; detailed lists of victims were drawn up using the Dehomag (IBM Germany) company's punch card machines, producing meticulous records of the killings. As prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was carefully catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was "in the eyes of the perpetrators … Germany's greatest achievement."^[35] The name ghetto refers to an area where people from a given ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. ... Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ... Deportation is the expelling of someone from a country. ... Please note: Any racial comments are not intended to be racist. ... Pharmacology (in Greek: pharmacon is drug, and logos is science) is the study of how chemical substances interfere with living systems. ... Cremation is the practice of disposing of a corpse by burning. ... Dehomag was a German business, effectively a franchisee and subcompany of International Business Machines. ... A CTR census machine, utilizing a punched card system. ...

Saul Friedländer writes that: "Not one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews."^[36] He writes that some Christian churches declared that converted Jews should be regarded as part of the flock, but even then only up to a point. Saul Friedländer (born 1932) is a French-Israeli historian. ...

Friedländer argues that this makes the Holocaust distinctive because antisemitic policies were able to unfold without the interference of countervailing forces of the kind normally found in advanced societies, such as industry, small businesses, churches, and other vested interests and lobby groups.^[36] This article is about the political effort. ...

Dominance of ideology and the scale of the genocide

In other genocides, pragmatic considerations such as control of territory and resources were central to the genocide policy. Yehuda Bauer argues that: Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (born 1926) is an historian and scholar of the Holocaust. ...

The basic motivation [of the Holocaust] was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, nonpragmatic ideology – which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means."^[37] A cabal is a number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community by intrigue. ... Aryan (/eÉ™rjÉ™n/ or /ɑːrjÉ™n/, Sanskrit: ) is a Sanskrit and Avestan word meaning noble/spiritual one. ... For other uses, see Myth (disambiguation). ... A hallucination is a perception in the absence of a stimulus that the person may or may not believe is real. ...

Responding to the German philosopher Ernst Nolte who claimed that the Holocaust was not unique, the German historian Eberhard Jäckel wrote in 1986 that the Holocaust was unique because: Ernst Nolte (born 11 January 1923, Witten, Germany) is a nationalistic German historian and philosopher, often described as one of the most brooding, German thinkers about history[1]. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of fascism and Communism. ... Eberhard Jäckel (June 29, 1929-) is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitlers role in German history. ...

"the National Socialist killing of the Jews was unique in that never before had a state with the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced that a specific human group, including its aged, its women and its children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried through this resolution using every possible means of state power".^[38]

The slaughter was systematically conducted in virtually all areas of Nazi-occupied territory in what are now 35 separate European countries.^[39] It was at its worst in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than seven million Jews in 1939. About five million Jews were killed there, including three million in occupied Poland and over one million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. The Wannsee Protocol makes clear that the Nazis also intended to carry out their "final solution of the Jewish question" in England and Ireland.^[40] Occupied Europe was the name given to the countries of Europe which were occupied by the military forces of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945. ... General location of the political entities known as Yugoslavia. ... The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. ...

Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was to be exterminated without exception. In other genocides, people were able to escape death by converting to another religion or in some other way assimilating. This option was not available to the Jews of occupied Europe,^[41] unless their grandparents had converted prior to January 18, 1871. All persons of recent Jewish ancestry were to be exterminated in lands controlled by Germany.^[42] Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religious identity, or a change from one religious identity to another. ...

Medical experiments

A cold water immersion experiment at Dachau concentration camp presided over by Professor Holzlohner (left) and Dr. Rascher (right)

Another distinctive feature of the Holocaust was the extensive use of human subjects in medical experiments. German physicians carried out such experiments at Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler concentration camps.^[43] The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Nazi human experimentation was medical experimentation on large numbers of people by the German Nazi regime in its concentration camps during World War II. // According to the indictment at the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, these experiments... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Buchenwald is the German for beech forest. A koolio forest in the hill range Elm (Höhenzug Elm), in the Helmstedt and Wolfenbüttel districts, Lower Saxony A German name for a Hungarian region Bakony Forest (Hungarian: , German: ) A Nazi concentration camp in Germany (German: ); See Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald... View of the barracks at Ravensbrück Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp located 90 km north of Berlin. ... Prisoners of Sachsenhausen, 19 Dec 1938 Sachsenhausen (IPA: ) was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and 1950. ... Camp entrance Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller (German Natzweiler) in France about 50 km from the city of Strasbourg. ...

The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele, who worked in Auschwitz. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries.^[43] The full extent of his work will never be known because the truckload of records he sent to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were destroyed by von Verschuer.^[44] Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards. Josef Mengele (March 16, 1911– February 7, 1979) was a German SS officer and a physician in the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. ... Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (in German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) was the name of a number of scientific institutes in Germany before World War II. After 1945 they were re-organised and renamed as Max Planck Institutes. ...

Romani children in Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments

He seemed particularly keen on working with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and personally take them to the gas chamber. They would call him "Onkel Mengele".^[45] Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins: Languages Romani, languages of native region Religions Christianity, Islam Related ethnic groups South Asians (Desi) The Romani people (as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies are an ethnic group living in many communities all over the world. ... Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ...

Development and execution

Origins

At 10 a.m. on April 1, 1933, members of the Sturmabteilung moved into place all over Germany, positioning themselves outside Jewish-owned businesses to deter customers. These stormtroopers are outside Israel's Department Store in Berlin. The signs read: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews." ("Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!")^[46] The store was ransacked during Kristallnacht in 1938, then handed over to a non-Jewish family.

Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg and Lucy Dawidowicz maintained that from the Middle Ages onward, German society and culture were suffused with anti-Semitism and there was a direct link from medieval pogroms to the Nazi death camps of the 1940s.^[47][48][49] Hans Küng has written that "Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism..."^[50] The Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, and the persecution and exodus of Germany's 525,000 Jews began almost immediately. In Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler had been open about his hatred of Jews, and gave ample warning of his intention to drive them from Germany's political, intellectual, and cultural life. He did not write that he would attempt to exterminate them, but he is reported to have been more explicit in private. As early as 1922, he allegedly told Major Joseph Hell, at the time a journalist: A painting of Chang and Eng Bunker, circa 1836 Conjoined human fetuses Conjoined twins can occur in non-human animal species. ... This article is about the drug. ... Antisemitism (alternatively spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism, also known as judeophobia) is prejudice and hostility toward Jews as a religious, racial, or ethnic group. ... Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations Ecumenism · Relation to other religions Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas Luther · Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Archbishop of Canterbury · Pope Coptic Pope · Ecumenical Patriarch Christianity Portal This box:      Competition... Martin Luther has been accused of Anti-Semitism, primarily in relation to his work On the Jews and their Lies. ... The seal of SA The  , abbreviated SA, (German for Storm division or Storm section, usually translated as stormtroop(er)s), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the NSDAP — the German Nazi party. ... At 10 a. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht, Crystal Night and the Night of the Broken Glass, was a pogrom that occurred throughout Nazi Germany on November 9–November 10, 1938. ... Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (born 1926) is an historian and scholar of the Holocaust. ... Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007 in Williston, Vermont) was one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. ... Lucy S. Davidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990), was a American historian, and an author of books in modern Jewish history in particular the Holocaust. ... The Russian word pogrom (погром) refers to a massive violent attack on people with simultaneous destruction of their environment (homes, businesses, religious centers). ... Hans Küng (born March 19, 1928 in Sursee, Canton of Lucerne), is a Catholic priest, a Swiss theologian, and a prolific author. ... The Nazi Party, officially: National Socialist German Workers Party, (German: , abbreviated NSDAP), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. ... Mein Kampf (English: My Struggle/My Battle) is a book by the Austrian-born leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. ...

Legal repression and emigration

Throughout the 1930s, the legal, economic, and social rights of Jews were steadily restricted. In legally defining "who is Jew", the Nazis considered anyone of Jewish descent, even the descendents of converts who converted from Judaism after January 18, 1871, (the founding of the German Empire) were still considered Jews. Friedländer writes that, for the Nazis, Germany drew its strength for its "purity of blood" and its "rootedness in the sacred German earth."^[52] In 1933, a series of laws were passed which contained "Aryan paragraphs" to exclude Jews from key areas: the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service; the physicians' law; and the farm law, forbidding Jews from owning farms or taking part in agriculture. Jewish lawyers were disbarred, and in Dresden, Jewish lawyers and judges were dragged out of their offices and courtrooms, and beaten.^[53] At the insistence of then president Hindenburg, Hitler added an exemption allowing Jewish civil servants who were veterans of the first world war, or whose fathers or sons had served, to remain in office. (Hindenburg was disturbed that people who had fought and bled for Germany would be forced from their state jobs.) Hitler revoked this exemption in 1937. Jews were excluded from schools and universities, (Law to prevent overcrowding in schools) and from belonging to the Journalists' Association, or from being owners or editors of newspapers .^[52] The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of April 27, 1933 wrote: For other uses, see Munich (disambiguation). ... The racial policy of Nazi Germany refers to the policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the so-called Aryan race and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy. ... The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. ... For German colonial territories, see German Colonial Empire. ... The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (in German: Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums or short: Berufsbeamtengesetz), also known as Civil Service Law, Civil Service Restoration Act, and Law to Re-establish the Civil Service, was a law passed by the National Socialist regime on April 7... Disbarment is a revocation of a lawyers ability to practice law or argue cases. ... This article is about the city in Germany. ... Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, known universally as Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal and statesman. ...

A self-respecting nation cannot, on a scale accepted up to now, leave its higher activities in the hands of people of racially foreign origin … Allowing the presence of too high a percentage of people of foreign origin in relation to their percentage in the general population could be interpreted as an acceptance of the superiority of other races, something decidedly to be rejected.^[54]

1935: Nazi definition of Jew, Mischling, and German and legal consequences as per the Nuremberg Laws, simplified in a 1935 chart

In 1935, Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which: prohibited Jews from marrying Aryans, annulled existing marriages between Jews and Aryans (the Law for the protection of German blood and German honor,) prohibited Jews from serving as civil servants, stripped German Jews of their citizenship and deprived them of all civil rights. In his speech introducing the laws, Hitler said that if the "Jewish problem" cannot be solved by these laws, it "must then be handed over by law to the National-Socialist Party for a final solution (Endlösung)."^[55] The expression "Endlösung" became the standard Nazi euphemism for the extermination of the Jews. In January 1939, he said in a public speech: "If international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into yet another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (vernichtung) of the Jewish race in Europe."^[56] Mischling is a term coined during the Third Reich era in Germany to denote persons deemed to have partial Jewish ancestry. ... The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. ... The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. ... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ... This article is about the term with respect to the Jewish Question in World War II. For other uses, see Final Solution (disambiguation). ... A euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener;[1] or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ...

Jewish intellectuals were among the first to leave. The philosopher Walter Benjamin left for Paris on March 18, 1933. Novelist Leon Feuchtwanger went to Switzerland. The conductor Bruno Walter fled after being told that the hall of the Berlin Philharmonic would be burned down if he conducted a concert there: the Frankfurter Zeitung explained on April 6 that Walter and fellow conductor Otto Klemperer had been forced to flee because the government was unable to protect them against the "mood" of the German public, which had been provoked by "Jewish artistic liquidators."^[57] Albert Einstein was visiting the U.S. on January 30, 1933. He returned to Ostende in Belgium, never to set foot in Germany again, and calling events there a "psychic illness of the masses"; he was expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and his citizenship was rescinded.^[58] Saul Friedländer writes that when Max Liebermann, honorary president of the Prussian Academy of Arts, resigned his position, not one of his colleagues expressed a word of sympathy, and he died ostracized two years later. When the police arrived in 1943 with a stretcher to deport his 85-year-old bedridden widow, she committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates rather than be taken.^[58] Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 27, 1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. ... Lion Feuchtwanger (pseudonym: J.L. Wetcheek) (7 July 1884 - 21 December 1958) was a German-Jewish novelist who was imprisoned in a French internment camp in Les Milles and later escaped to Los Angeles with the help of his wife, Marta. ... Bruno Walter (Bruno Walter Schlesinger) (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor and composer. ... The Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Philharmonic), is one of the worlds leading orchestras. ... The Frankfurter Zeitung was a German newspaper that appeared from 1856 to 1943. ... Otto Klemperer (May 14, 1885 – July 6, 1973) was a German-born conductor and composer. ... “Einstein” redirects here. ... Saul Friedländer (born 1932) is a French-Israeli historian. ... Max Liebermann in 1904 Max Liebermann (July 20, 1847 in Berlin - February 8, 1935) was a German painter. ... For other uses, see Suicide (disambiguation). ... The term drug overdose (or simply overdose) describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced. ... Barbituric acid, the basic structure of all barbiturates Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and by virtue of this they produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to anesthesia. ...

Kristallnacht (1938)

Berlin's Fasanenstrasse synagogue after Kristallnacht, November 9–10, 1938.

On November 7, 1938, Jewish minor Herschel Grünspan assassinated Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris.^[59] This incident was used by the Nazis to initiate the transition from legal repression to large-scale outright violence against Jewish Germans.^[59] What the Nazis claimed to be spontaneous "public outrage", was a concerted action of Nazi party and SA members and affiliates, who after a Joseph Goebbels hate speech started mass pogroms throughout Nazi Germany, then consisting of Germany proper, Austria and Sudetenland.^[59] The progroms became known as (Reichs-) Kristallnacht ("the Night of Broken Glass", literally "Crystal Night"), or November pogroms.^[59] Jews were attacked and Jewish property was vandalized,^[59] over 7,000 Jewish shops and 1,668 synagogues (almost every synagogue in Germany) were damaged or destroyed. The death toll is assumed to be much higher than the official number of 91 dead.^[59] 30,000^[60] were sent to concentration camps, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen,^[59] Buchenwald,^[59] and Oranienburg concentration camp,^[61] where they were kept for several weeks.^[61] and released when they could either prove that they were about to emigrate in the near future, or after property transfers to the Nazis.^[59] The German Jewry was collectively made responsible for restitution of the material damage of the pogrom, amounting to several hundreds of thousand Reichsmark, and furthermore had to pay collectively an "atonement tax" of more than a billion Reichsmark.^[59] The Fasanenstrasse synagogue (German: ) was a liberal Jewish Synagogue in Berlin, Germany. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht, Crystal Night and the Night of the Broken Glass, was a pogrom that occurred throughout Nazi Germany on November 9–November 10, 1938. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht, Crystal Night and the Night of the Broken Glass, was a pogrom that occurred throughout Nazi Germany on November 9–November 10, 1938. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Ernst Eduard vom Rath (June 3, 1909–November 9, 1938) was a German diplomat. ... This article is about the capital of France. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... The Nazi Party, officially: National Socialist German Workers Party, (German: , abbreviated NSDAP), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. ... The seal of SA The  , abbreviated SA, (German for Storm division or Storm section, usually translated as stormtroop(er)s), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the NSDAP — the German Nazi party. ... Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation: IPA: ; English generally IPA: ) (October 29, 1897 – May 1, 1945) was a German politician and Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the National Socialist regime from 1933 to 1945. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... The period of German history from 1919 to 1933 is known as the Weimar Republic (in German Weimarer Republik). It is named after the city of Weimar, where a national assembly convened to produce a new constitution after the German monarchy was abolished following the nations defeat in World... Sudetenland (Czech and Polish: Sudety) was the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the Western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia associated with Bohemia. ... Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht and in English as The Night of Broken Glass, was a massive nationwide pogrom in Germany on the night of November 9, 1938 (including early hours of the following day). ... A synagogue (from Greek synagoge place of assembly literally meeting, assembly,) is a Jewish house of prayer and study. ... A concentration camp is a large detention centre created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Prisoners of Sachsenhausen, 19 Dec 1938 Sachsenhausen (IPA: ) was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and 1950. ... Gate with the words Jedem das Seine (literally, “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves”) Forced laborers in Buchenwald; (Elie Wiesel is 2nd row, 7th from left). ... A 100 Reichsmark banknote from Germany of 1935 (http://www. ... A 100 Reichsmark banknote from Germany of 1935 (http://www. ...

After these pogroms, Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany accelerated, while public Jewish life in Germany ceased to exist.^[59] Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ...

Early measures in German occupied Poland

Nazi Germany 1941, including areas annexed from Poland and the General Government area.

The question of the treatment of the Jews became an urgent one for the Nazis after September 1939, when they invaded the western half of Poland, home to about two million Jews. The pre-war Second Polish Republic had been split between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, in the preceding Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Of the German share of Poland, the northwestern parts were annexed, while the southeastern parts were made the Generalgouvernement led by Hans Frank. The invasion led Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and France to declare war - World War II had started. For the Soviet Unions military action against Poland under the same alliance, see Soviet invasion of Poland (1939). ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Reichsgau and General Governement in 1941 At the beginning of World War II, significant Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... For the Soviet Unions military action against Poland under the same alliance, see Soviet invasion of Poland (1939). ... Anthem: Mazurek DÄ…browskiego Capital Warsaw Language(s) Polish Government Republic President List Prime minister List Legislature Sejm Historical era Interwar period  - World War I November 11, 1918  - Invasion November 2, 1939 Area  - 1939 388,600 km2 150,039 sq mi Population  - 1939 est. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Molotov signs the German-Soviet non-aggression pact. ... Reichsgau and General Governement in 1941 At the beginning of World War II, significant Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany. ... Generalgouvernement may refer to one of the following. ... Hans Frank (May 23, 1900 – October 16, 1946) was a lawyer for the Nazi party during the 1920s and a senior official in Nazi Germany. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Himmler's right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich, recommended concentrating all the Polish Jews in ghettos in major cities, where they would be put to work for the German war industry. The ghettos would be in cities located on railway junctions, so that, in Heydrich's words, "future measures can be accomplished more easily."^[62] During his interrogation in 1961, Adolf Eichmann testified that the expression "future measures" was understood to mean "physical extermination."^[62] Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. ... For other uses, see Ghetto (disambiguation). ... Otto Adolf Eichmann (known as Adolf Eichmann; March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). ...

German policemen tormenting a Jew in Rzeszów, Poland.

In September, Himmler appointed Reinhard Heydrich head of the Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA, not be to confused with the RuSHA), a body overseeing the work of the SS, the Security Police (SD), and the Gestapo in occupied Poland and charged with carrying out the policy towards the Jews described in Heydrich's report. The first organized murders of Jews by German forces occurred during Operation Tannenberg and through Selbstschutz units. Later, the Jews were herded into ghettos, mostly in the General Government area of central Poland, where they were put to work under the Reich Labor Office headed by Fritz Saukel. Here many thousands were killed in various ways, and many more died of disease, starvation, and exhaustion, but there was still no program of systematic killing. There is no doubt, however, that the Nazis saw forced labor as a form of extermination. The expression Vernichtung durch Arbeit ("destruction through work") was frequently used. Rzeszów ( ) is a city in south-eastern Poland with a population of 164,000 (2005), granted a town charter in 1354, the capital of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously of Rzeszów Voivodeship (1945-1998). ... Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. ... Reinhard Heydrich - the first director of RSHA The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), was a subordinate organization of the SS created by Heinrich Himmler on September 22, 1939, through the merger of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Agency), the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police). ... SS redirects here. ... Sicherheitsdienst (SD) sleeve insignia. ... The   (contraction of Geheime Staatspolizei: “secret state police”) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. ... Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was the codename for one of the extermination actions directed at the Polish people during World War II, part of the Generalplan Ost. ... Selbstschutz (German: ) stands for two organisations: it was (1) a name used by a number of paramilitary organisations created by ethnic Germans in Central Europe and (2) is a name for self-defence measures and units in ethnic German, Austrian, and Swiss civil defence. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ...

Although it was clear by 1941 that the SS hierarchy led by Himmler and Heydrich was determined to embark on a policy of killing all the Jews under German control, there were important centers of opposition to this policy within the Nazi regime. The grounds for the opposition were mainly economic, not humanitarian. Hermann Göring, who had overall control of the German war industry, and the German army's Economics Department, representing the armaments industry, argued that the enormous Jewish labor force assembled in the General Government area (more than a million able-bodied workers) was an asset too valuable to waste while Germany was preparing to invade the Soviet Union. Humanitarianism is the view that all people should be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve as human beings, and that advancing the well-being of humanity is a noble goal. ...   (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, designated successor to Adolf Hitler, and commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). ...

Early measures in other occupied countries

When Nazi Germany occupied Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France in 1940, and Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941, anti-Semitic measures were also introduced into these countries, although the pace and severity varied greatly from country to country according to local political circumstances. Jews were removed from economic and cultural life and were subject to various restrictive laws, but physical deportation did not occur in most places before 1942. The Vichy regime in occupied France actively collaborated in persecuting French Jews. Germany's allies Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Finland were pressured to introduce antisemitic measures, but for the most part they did not comply until compelled to do so. The German puppet regime in Croatia, on the other hand, began actively persecuting Jews on its own initiative.^{[citation needed]} Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... Motto Travail, famille, patrie French: Unoccupied zone of Vichy France (until November 1942) Capital Vichy Capital-in-exile Sigmaringen (1944-1945) Language(s) French Religion Roman Catholic Government Dictatorship Chief of state  - 1940 — 1944 Philippe Pétain President of the Council  - 1940 — 1942 Philippe Pétain  - 1942 — 1944 Pierre Laval...

Resettlement and deportation to colonies and reservations

Madagascar and similar plans

Before the war, the Nazis had thought of mass resettlements of the German (and subsequently the European) Jewry to areas outside Europe. Because Germany had lost her colonies in World War I, diplomatic efforts were undertaken to negotiate arrangements with the colonial powers, primarily the United Kingdom and France.^[64] These efforts included plans to resettle Jews to British Palestine,^[65] Italian Abessinia,^[65] British Guinea,^[66] British Rhodesia,^[66] French Madagascar,^[65] and Australia.^[67] The Madagascar Plan was a policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the entire Jewish population of Europe to the French island colony of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... A 2003 satellite image of the region. ... This article is about the African country. ... This article is about the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia, todays Zimbabwe. ...

Plans to reclaim former German colonies like Tanzania and Namibia as a place to resettle Jews were halted by Adolf Hitler, who argued that no place where "so much blood of heroic Germans had been spilled" should be made available as a residence for the "worst enemies of the Germans".^[68]   (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933, and Führer (leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. ...

Of the envisioned resettlement areas, Madagascar was the most seriously discussed. While Jews had been murdered on mass scale since 1939, in 1940 some Nazis considered eliminating Jews by the unrealistic Madagascar Plan which, however futile, in retrospect did constitute an important psychological step on the path to the Holocaust.^[69] The planning was carried out by Eichmann's office; Heydrich called it a "territorial final solution". The plan was to ship all European Jews to Madagascar. In view of the difficulties of supporting more population in the General Gouvernment in July 1940, Hitler, still hoping for success with the Madagascar plan, stopped the deportation of Jews there.^[70] This was temporary, however, as the military situation offered no possibility to conquer Britain. The plan may have been foreseen as a remote and slower genocide through the unfavorable conditions on the island.^[71] Although the Final Solution was already in place and Jews were being exterminated, the formal declaration of the Plan's end was abandoned on February 10, 1942, when the German Foreign Office was given an official explanation that due to the war with the Soviet Union Jews are going to be "sent to the east".^[72] The Madagascar Plan was a policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the entire Jewish population of Europe to the French island colony of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ...

General Government and Lublin reservation (Nisko plan)

On September 28, 1939, Germany gained control over the Lublin area through the German-Soviet agreement in exchange for Lithuania.^[73] According to the Nisko Plan, they set up the Lublin-Lipowa Reservation in the area. The reservation was designated by Adolf Eichmann, who was assigned the task of removing all Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.^[74] They shipped the first Jews to Lublin less than three weeks later on October 18, 1939. The first train loads consisted of Jews deported from Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.^[75] By January 30, 1940, historians estimate a total of 78,000 Jews had been deported to Lublin from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.^[76] On 12 and February 13, 1940, the Pomeranian Jews were deported to the Lublin reservation, resulting in Pomeranian Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg to be the first to declare his Gau "judenrein" ("free of Jews").^[77] On March 24, 1940 Hermann Göring put a hold on the Nisko Plan, and by the end of April, abandoned it entirely.^[78] By the time the Nisko Plan was stopped, the total number of Jews who had been transported to Nisko had reached 95,000, many of whom had died due to starvation.^[79] The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... Otto Adolf Eichmann (known as Adolf Eichmann; March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). ... Capital Prague Language(s) Czech, German Political structure Protectorate Reichsprotektor  - 1939-1941 Konstantin von Neurath  - 1941-1942 Reinhard Heydrich (acting)  - 1942-1943 Kurt Daluege (acting)  - 1943-1945 Wilhelm Frick Staatspräsident  - 1939-1945 Emil Hácha Historical era World War II  - Occupation March 15, 1939  - Fall of Prague May 13... Capital Prague Language(s) Czech, German Political structure Protectorate Reichsprotektor  - 1939-1941 Konstantin von Neurath  - 1941-1942 Reinhard Heydrich (acting)  - 1942-1943 Kurt Daluege (acting)  - 1943-1945 Wilhelm Frick Staatspräsident  - 1939-1945 Emil Hácha Historical era World War II  - Occupation March 15, 1939  - Fall of Prague May 13... Pomerania and the other Provinces of Prussia in the German Empire. ... A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP (more commonly known as the Nazi Party) or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau. ... Franz Schwede (born 5 March 1888 in Drawöhnen near Memel, East Prussia, now Dreverna near KlaipÄ—da, Lithuania; died 19 October 1960 in Coburg) was a well-known National Socialist politician. ... Gau can denote Gau, the German term for shire. ... The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. ...   (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, designated successor to Adolf Hitler, and commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). ...

During 1940 and 1941, the murder of large numbers of Jews in German occupied Poland continued, and the deportation of Jews were deported to the General Gouvernment was undertaken. The deportation of Jews from Germany, particularly Berlin, was not officially completed until 1943. (Many Berlin Jews were able to survive in hiding.) By December 1939, 3.5 million Jews were crowded into the General Government area. The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ...

Concentration and labor camps (1933–1945)

Major concentration and extermination camps: Auschwitz, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Chełmno, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Grini, Jasenovac, Klooga, Majdanek, Maly Trostinets, Mauthausen-Gusen, Ravensbrück, and Treblinka

Nazi concentration camp badges: Black triangle, Pink triangle, Purple triangle, and Yellow badge

April 12, 1945: Lager Nordhausen, where 20,000 inmates are believed to have died.

Leading up to the 1933 elections, the Nazis began intensifying acts of violence to wreak havoc among the opposition. With the cooperation of local authorities, they set up camps as concentration centers within Germany. One of the first was Dachau, which opened in March 1933. These early camps were meant to hold, torture, or kill only political prisoners, such as Communists and Social Democrats.^[80] Piles of bodies in a liberated Nazi concentration camp in Germany Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany under Hitler maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager, abbreviated KZ or KL) throughout the territories it controlled. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The following is a list of Nazi German concentration camps. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... This article is about the Nazi concentration camp. ... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp was a Nazi extermination camp that was situated 70 km from Łódź near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German), in Greater Poland (which was, in 1939, annexed and incorporated into Germany under the name of Reichsgau Wartheland). ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Flossenbürg concentration camp was a German prison built in 1938 at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria. ... Jasenovac is a municipality in Central Croatia, in the southern part of the Sisak-Moslavina county at the confluence of the river Una into Sava. ... Klooga was a Nazi labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp established in the summer of 1943 during World War II near the northern Estonian village of the same name. ... Majdanek mausoleum, containing the ashes of cremated victims Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. ... Maly Trostenets (Belarusian: Малы́ Трасьцяне́ц; Russian: Ма́лый Тростене́ц), a small village on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, was the site of a relatively less known but highly efficient — and prolific — Nazi extermination camp. ... The Mauthausen parade ground – a view towards the main gate Mauthausen (known from the summer of 1940 as Mauthausen-Gusen) grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that were built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly 20 km east of the city... View of the barracks at Ravensbrück Ravensbrück was a notorious womens concentration camp during in World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). ... Treblinka is a small village in the Mazowieckie voivodship (province) of Poland. ... A chart, circa 1938 - 1942, of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. ... This article is about the Black Triangle as a badge or symbol: for other uses see the disambiguation page Black triangle. ... The pink triangle, a popular gay pride symbol, was originally used to denote homosexual men as a Nazi concentration camp badge. ... The purple triangle was a concentration camp badge used by the Nazis to identify several unorthodox non-conformist religious groups known as Bibelforscher.[1][2] Among these were mainly Jehovahs Witnesses, as well as a few members of Witness splinter groups, and members of the Adventist, Baptist, and New... Compulsory Jewish badge under the Nazi occupation of Europe: the Star of David with the word Jew inside (this one in German) A yellow badge, also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a mandatory mark or a piece of cloth of specific geometric shape, worn on the outer garment... Categories: Stub | Nazi concentration camps ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich...

These early prisons – usually basements and storehouses – were eventually consolidated into full-blown, centrally run camps outside the cities. By 1942, six large extermination camps had been established in Nazi-occupied Poland.^[80] After 1939, the camps increasingly became places where Jews and POWs were either killed or forced to live as slave laborers, undernourished and tortured.^[81] It is estimated that the Germans established 15,000 camps in the occupied countries, many of them in Poland.^[82][83]

New camps were focused on areas with large Jewish, Polish intelligentsia, communist, or Roma and Sinti populations, including inside Germany. The transportation of prisoners was often carried out under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their destination.

Extermination through labour, a means whereby camp inmates would literally be worked to death – or frequently worked until they could no longer perform work tasks, followed by their selection for extermination – was invoked as a further systematic extermination policy. Furthermore, while not designed as a method for systematic extermination, many camp prisoners died because of harsh overall conditions or from executions carried out on a whim after being allowed to live for days or months. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Upon admission, some camps tattooed prisoners with a prisoner ID.^[84] Those fit for work were dispatched for 12 to 14 hour shifts. Before and after, there were roll calls that could sometimes last for hours, with prisoners regularly dying of exposure.^[85]

Ghettos (1940–1945)

Main ghettos: Kraków Ghetto, Łódź Ghetto, Lwów Ghetto, Warsaw Ghetto, Vilna Ghetto and Riga ghetto

A child dying in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto

After the invasion of Poland, the German Nazis established ghettos in which Jews and some Romani were confined, until they were eventually shipped to death camps to be murdered. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people, and the Łódź Ghetto the second largest, holding 160,000. They were, in effect, immensely crowded prisons, described by Michael Berenbaum as instruments of "slow, passive murder."^[86] Though the Warsaw Ghetto contained 400,000 people^[87]—30% of the population of Warsaw—it occupied only 2.4% of the city's area, averaging 9.2 people per room. A boy working in the Warsaw Ghetto cemetery drags a corpse to the edge of the mass grave where it will be buried. ... Deportation of Jews from the Kraków Ghetto, March 1943 The Jewish ghetto in Kraków (Cracow) was one of the five main ghettos created by the Nazis in the General Government, during their occupation of Poland during World War II. It was a staging point to begin dividing able... The Łódź Ghetto (historically the Litzmannstadt Ghetto) was the second-largest ghetto (after the Warsaw Ghetto) established for Jews and Roma in Nazi-occupied Poland. ... The Lwów Ghetto (also called the Lemberg Ghetto, Lviv Ghetto, and Lvov Ghetto), was in the city of Lviv, the largest city in todays western Ukraine, was one of the larger Ghettos established for Jews in that times Poland by Nazi authorities. ... Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, former capital of Poland in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and... The Vilna Ghetto or Vilnius Ghetto was the one of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius during the Holocaust in World War II. During roughly 2 years of its existence, starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps reduced... For the Soviet Unions military action against Poland under the same alliance, see Soviet invasion of Poland (1939). ... For other uses, see Ghetto (disambiguation). ... Majdanek - crematorium Extermination camp (German Vernichtungslager) was the term applied to a group of camps set up by Nazi Germany during World War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe, although members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as Roma (Gypsies... Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, former capital of Poland in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and... The Łódź Ghetto (historically the Litzmannstadt Ghetto) was the second-largest ghetto (after the Warsaw Ghetto) established for Jews and Roma in Nazi-occupied Poland. ...

From 1940 through 1942, starvation and disease, especially typhoid, killed hundreds of thousands. Over 43,000 residents of the Warsaw ghetto died there in 1941,^[87] more than one in ten; in Theresienstadt, more than half the residents died in 1942.^[86] For a similar disease with a similar name, see typhus. ... Fortress plan, 1869 Terezín (German: Theresienstadt) is name of former military fortress and garrison town in Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. ...

Each ghetto was run by a Judenrat (Jewish council) of German-appointed Jewish community leaders, who were responsible for the day-to-day running of the ghetto, including the provision of food, water, heat, medicine, and shelter, and who were also expected to make arrangements for deportations to extermination camps. Heinrich Himmler ordered the start of the deportations on July 19, 1942, and three days later, on July 22, the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto began; over the next 52 days, until September 12, 300,000 people from Warsaw alone were transported in freight trains to the Treblinka extermination camp. Many other ghettos were completely depopulated. Judenrats, German for Jewish council, were administrative bodies that the Germans required Jews to form in each ghetto in General Government (the Nazi-occupied teritory of Poland) and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ... Jews being loaded onto trains at Umschlagplatz, Warsaw. ... Treblinka II was a Nazi extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka were used in the Holocaust for the systematic genocide of people categorized as sub-humans by the Nazis. ...

Berenbaum writes that the defining moment that tested the courage and character of each Judenrat came when they were asked to provide a list of names of the next group to be deported. The Judenrat members went through the tried and tested methods of delay, bribery, stonewalling, pleading, and argumentation, until finally a decision had to be made. Some argued that their responsibility was to save the Jews who could be saved, and that therefore others had to be sacrificed; others argued, following Maimonides, that not a single individual should be handed over who had not committed a capital crime. Judenrat leaders such as Dr. Joseph Parnas in Lviv, who refused to compile a list, were shot. On October 14, 1942, the entire Judenrat of Byaroza committed suicide rather than cooperate with the deportations.^[89] Commonly used image indicating one artists conception of Maimonidess appearance Maimonides (March 30, 1135 or 1138–December 13, 1204) was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Spain, Morocco and Egypt during the Middle Ages. ... Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a crime, often called a capital offense or a capital crime. ... “Lvov” redirects here. ...

The first ghetto uprising occurred in September 1942 in the small town of Łachwa in southeast Poland. Though there were armed resistance attempts in the larger ghettos in 1943, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Białystok Ghetto Uprising, in every case they failed against the unmatched Nazi military force, and the remaining Jews were either killed or deported to the death camps, which the Germans euphemistically called "resettlement in the East."^[90] Ghetto uprisings were armed revolts by Jews and other groups incarcerated in Nazi ghettos during World War II against the plans to deport the inhabitants to concentration and death camps. ... Map of the ghettos in occupied Europe, 1939-45, showing the location of Lakhva (south of Minsk, east of Pinsk) Einsatzgruppen massacres in the Soviet Union Lakhva (or Lachva, Lachwa) (Belarusian: Лахва) (Polish:Łachwa) (Russian:Лахва) (Hebrew:לחווא) (Yiddish:לאַכװע) is a small town in southern Belarus, in Brest voblast, approximately 80 kilometres to... Belligerents Germany (Waffen-SS, SD, OrPo, Gestapo, Wehrmacht) Collaborators (Arajs Kommando, Blue Police, Jewish Police, Lithuanian Police) Jewish resistance (Å»OB, Å»ZW) Polish resistance (AK, GL) Commanders Franz Bürkl Ludwig Hahn Odilo Globocnik Friedrich Krüger Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg Jürgen Stroop Mordechaj Anielewicz† Dawid Apfelbaum† Icchak Cukierman Marek... BiaÅ‚ystok Ghetto Uprising was an insurrection in Polands BiaÅ‚ystok Ghetto against Germany during World War II. It was organised and led by Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa (Polish for Anti-fascist Military Organisation). ...

Death squads (1941–1943)

A member of Einsatzgruppe D is about to shoot a man sitting by a mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. Present in the background are members of the German Army, the German Labor Service, and the Hitler Youth.^[91] The back of the photograph is inscribed "The last Jew in Vinnitsa".

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 opened a new phase. The Holocaust intensified after the Nazis occupied Lithuania, where close to 80 percent of Lithuanian Jews were exterminated before the end of the year.^[92][93] The Soviet territories occupied by early 1942, including all of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Moldova and most Russian territory west of the line Leningrad-Moscow-Rostov, contained about three million Jews, including hundreds of thousands who had fled Poland in 1939. Despite the chaos of the Soviet retreat, some effort was made to evacuate Jews, and about a million succeeded in escaping further east.^{[citation needed]} The remaining three million were left at the mercy of the Nazis. A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Babi Yar (Ukrainian: Бабин яр, Babyn yar; Russian: Бабий яр, Babiy yar) is a ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, located between the Frunze and Melnykov streets and between the St. ... The Ponary massacre (or Panerai massacre) was the sequence of events that took place between July 1941 and August 1944 in the town of Paneriai (Polish: ), now a suburb of Vilnius (Wilno), which became the mass murder site of approximately 100,000 victims, the vast majority of them Jews and... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... Vinnytsia, or Vinnytsya (Ukrainian Вінниця, Polish: Winnica) is a city in central Ukraine, located on the banks of Pivdennyi Buh River in 270 km far from the capital Kyiv. ... The straight-armed Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross, the emblem of the Wehrmacht. ... Lithuanian Jews (known in Yiddish and Haredi English as Litvish (adjective) or Litvaks (noun)) are Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Lita, a region including not only present-day Lithuania but also Latvia, much of Belarus and the northeastern SuwaÅ‚ki region of Poland. ... Leningrad (Russian: Ленинград) may mean: St. ... Rostov (Russian: Росто́в; Old Norse: Rostofa) is one of the oldest towns in Russia and an important tourist centre of the so called Golden ring. ...

Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod in the Ukraine. The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted by a member of the Polish resistance."

Members of the local populations in certain occupied Soviet territories participated substantially in the killings of Jews and others.^[94] In Lithuania, Latvia and western Ukraine, locals were deeply involved in the murder of Jews from the very beginning of the German occupation.^[94] The Latvian Arajs Kommando was an example of such an operation.^[94] To the south, Ukrainians killed approximately 24,000 Jews.^[94] In addition, Latvian and Lithuanian units left their own countries, and committed murders of Jews in Belarus, and Ukrainians served as concentration and death camp guards in Poland.^[94] Many of the mass killings were carried out in public, a change from previous practice.^[94] German witnesses to these killings emphasized the participation of the locals.^[94] Ultimately it was the Germans who organized and channelled the local participants in The Holocaust.^[94] The reconstructed fortress of Narva (to the left) overlooking the Russian fortress of Ivangorod (to the right). ... Belligerents Soviet Union[1] Polish Secret State Polish Committee of National Liberation Finland (from 1944) Romania (from 1944) Bulgaria (from 1944) Czechoslovak Republic Yugoslav partisans Germany[2] Finland (to 1944) Romania (to 1944) Italy (to 1943) Hungary Slovakia Croatia Bulgaria (September 5-8, 1944) Volunteers Commanders Joseph Stalin Aleksei Antonov... German supply train blown up by the Armia Krajowa during World War II. Polish resistance movement was a resistance movement in Poland, part of the anti-fascist resistance movement which fought against the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany during World War II. Resistance to the Nazi German occupation began...

Raul Hilberg writes that the German Einsatzgruppen commanders were ordinary citizens; the great majority were university-educated professionals.^[95] They used their skills to become efficient killers, according to Michael Berenbaum.^[91] Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007 in Williston, Vermont) was one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. ... Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ...

The large-scale killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories was assigned to SS formations called Einsatzgruppen ("task groups"), under the overall command of Heydrich. These had been used on a limited scale in Poland in 1939, but were now organized on a much larger scale. Einsatzgruppe A (commanded by SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Stahlecker) was assigned to the Baltic area, Einsatzgruppe B (SS-Brigadeführer Artur Nebe) to Belarus, Einsatzgruppe C (SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Rasch) to north and central Ukraine, and Einsatzgruppe D (SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Ohlendorf) to Moldova, south Ukraine, the Crimea, and, during 1942, the north Caucasus. Of the four Einsatzgruppen, three were commanded by holders of doctorate degrees, of whom one (Rasch) held a double doctorate.^[96] A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... Franz Walter Stahlecker (10 October 1900–23 March 1942) was commander of Einsatzgruppe A and Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF: Higher SS and Police Leader) of Reichskommissariat Ostland. ... SS-Gruppenführer (General) Arthur Nebe (13 November 1894–21 March 1945) was Berlin Police Commissioner in the 1920s and an early member of both the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS). ... SS Gruppenführer Dr Otto Rasch (7 December 1891 - 1 November 1948) was a high-ranking Nazi official in the occupied Eastern territories, commanding Einsatzgruppe C (northern and central Ukraine) until October 1941. ... Otto Ohlendorf. ... Motto: ÐŸÑ€Ð¾Ñ†Ð²ÐµÑ‚ание в единстве(Russian) Protsvetanie v edinstve(transliteration) Prosperity in unity Anthem: ÐÐ¸Ð²Ñ‹ и горы твои волшебны, Родина(Russian) Nivy i gory tvoi volshebny, Rodina(transliteration) Your fields and mounts are wonderful, Motherland Location of Crimea (red) with respect to Ukraine (light blue). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Caucasus Mountains. ...

According to Ohlendorf at his trial, "the Einsatzgruppen had the mission to protect the rear of the troops by killing the Jews, Gypsies, Communist functionaries, active Communists, and all persons who would endanger the security." In practice, their victims were nearly all defenseless Jewish civilians (not a single Einsatzgruppe member was killed in action during these operations). By December 1941, the four Einsatzgruppen listed above had killed, respectively, 125,000, 45,000, 75,000, and 55,000 people—a total of 300,000 people—mainly by shooting or with hand grenades at mass killing sites outside the major towns. Otto Ohlendorf testifying on his own behalf. ...

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of one survivor of the Einsatzgruppen in Piryatin, Ukraine, when they killed 1,600 Jews on April 6, 1942, the second day of Passover: Interior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exterior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum viewed from Raoul Wallenberg Place (15th St. ... This article is about the Jewish holiday. ...

I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 p.m. they gave the command, "Fill in the pits." Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil … His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: "Finish me off!" … A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately. "Mommy!" That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious.^[91]

The most notorious massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union was at a ravine called Babi Yar outside Kiev, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on September 29–30, 1941. The killing of all the Jews in Kiev was decided on by the military governor (Major-General Friedrich Eberhardt), the Police Commander for Army Group South (SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln) and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by a mixture of SS, SD and Security Police, assisted by Ukrainian police. Babi Yar (Ukrainian: Бабин яр, Babyn yar; Russian: Бабий яр, Babiy yar) is a ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, located between the Frunze and Melnykov streets and between the St. ... Map of Ukraine with Kiev highlighted Coordinates: , Country Ukraine Oblast Kiev City Municipality Raion Municipality Government  - Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi Elevation 179 m (587 ft) Population (2006)  - City 4,450,968  - Density 3,299/km² (8,544. ... Friedrich Jeckeln (2 February 1895 - 3 February 1946) was an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer who served as an SS and Police Leader in Russia during the Second World War. ...

On Monday the Jews of Kiev gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late: by the time they heard the machine-gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene: For the Swedish death metal band, see Cemetary. ...

[O]ne after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and overgarments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him.^[97] The MP5 is a third-generation submachine gun that is widely used by law enforcement tactical teams and military forces. ...

From left to right; Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Karl Wolff (second from the right) at the Obersalzberg, May 1939. Wolff wrote in his diary that Himmler had vomited after witnessing the mass shooting of 100 Jews.^[98]

In August 1941 Himmler travelled to Minsk, where he personally witnessed 100 Jews being shot in a ditch outside the town, an event described by SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff in his diary. "Himmler's face was green. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his cheek where a piece of brain had squirted up on to it. Then he vomited." After recovering his composure, he lectured the SS men on the need to follow the "highest moral law of the Party" in carrying out their tasks. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. ... Karl Wolff (2nd from the right) together with, from left to right: Heinrich Himmler (far l. ... Haus Wachenfeld during its conversion into the Berghof in about June 1936. ... Location of Minsk, shown within the Minsk Voblast Coordinates: Country Subdivision Belarus Minsk Founded 1067 Government  - Mayor Mikhail Pavlov Area  - City 305. ... Karl Wolff (2nd from the right) together with, from left to right: Heinrich Himmler (far l. ... Vomiting (or emesis) is the forceful expulsion of the contents of ones stomach through the mouth. ...

Pogroms (1939–1942)

A number of deadly pogroms by local populations occurred during the Second World War, some with Nazi encouragement, and some spontaneously. This included the Iaşi pogrom in Romania on June 30, 1941, in which as many 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian residents and police, and the Jedwabne pogrom, in which between 380 and 1,600 Jews were killed by local Poles in July 1941.^[99] Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить IPA: - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious or other, and characterized by destruction of their homes, businesses and religious centres. ... On 1 July 1940, in the town of Dorohoi in Romania, Romanian military units performed a pogrom against the local Jews, during which, according to an official Romanian report, 53 Jews were murdered, and dozens injured. ... The IaÅŸi pogrom of June 27, 1941 was one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history, launched by governmental forces in the Romanian city of IaÅŸi against its Jewish population, resulting in the brutal mass-murder of at least 13,266[1] Jews, according to Romanian authorities. ... After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special Einsatzgruppen were organized to kill as many Jews as it was possible on the Polish areas annexed by Soviet Union. ... The Legionnaires Rebellion and the Bucharest Pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between the 21st and the 23rd of January, 1941. ... The old town of Lviv Lviv (Ukrainian: Львів, L’viv ; German: ; Yiddish: ; Polish: ; Russian: , see also other names) is an administrative center in western Ukraine with more than a millennium of history as a settlement, and over seven centuries as a city. ... The Odessa Massacre was the extermination of Jews and Communists in Odessa during the autumn of 1941. ... Pogrom (from Russian: ; from громить IPA: - to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious or other, and characterized by destruction of their homes, businesses and religious centres. ... The IaÅŸi pogrom of June 27, 1941 was one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history, launched by governmental forces in the Romanian city of IaÅŸi against its Jewish population, resulting in the brutal mass-murder of at least 13,266[1] Jews, according to Romanian authorities. ... After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special Einsatzgruppen were organized to kill as many Jews as it was possible on the Polish areas annexed by Soviet Union. ...

New methods of mass murder

Gas van in Chełmno extermination camp

Starting in December 1939, the Nazis introduced new methods of mass murder by using gas.^[100] First experimental vans, equipped with gas cylinders and a sealed trunk compartment, were used to kill mental care clients of sanatoria in Pomerania, East Prussia, and occupied Poland since 1939, as part of an operation termed Aktion T4.^[100] In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, larger vans holding up to 100 people were used in a similar way since November 1941, yet the gas did not come from a cylinder but directly from the engine's exhaust.^[100] These vans were introduced to the Chelmno concentration camp in December 1941, and another 15 of them were used by the death squads in the occupied Soviet Union.^[100] These gas vans were developed and run under supervision of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Bureau), and were used to kill about 500,000 people, primarily Jews, but also Romani and others.^[100] The vans were carefully monitored and month later a report stated that 'ninety seven thousand have been processed using three vans, without any defects showing up in the machines'^[101]. The gas van was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill their victims during World War II. It was a vehicle with an air-tight compartment for victims into which exhaust fumes were transmitted while the engine was running. ... For other uses, see Gas chamber (disambiguation). ... The gas van was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill their victims during World War II. It was a vehicle with an air-tight compartment for victims into which exhaust fumes were transmitted while the engine was running. ... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp was a Nazi extermination camp that was situated 70 km from Łódź near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German), in Greater Poland (which was, in 1939, annexed and incorporated into Germany under the name of Reichsgau Wartheland). ... Pomerania and the other Provinces of Prussia in the German Empire. ... East Prussia (German: Ostpreu en; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of Kingdom of Prussia, situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia. ... This poster reads: This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. ... Prisoners of Sachsenhausen, 19 Dec 1938 Sachsenhausen (IPA: ) was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and 1950. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... A death squad is an extra-judicial group whose members execute or assassinate persons they believe to be politically unreliable or undesirable. ... The Eastern Front was the theatre of combat between Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union during World War II. It was somewhat separate from the other theatres of the war, not only geographically, but also for its scale and ferocity. ... Romani (or Romany) relates to: The Roma people, sometimes referred to as Gypsies. Romani language, the language of the Roma. ...

A need for new mass murder techniques was also expressed by Hans Frank, governor of the General Government, who noted that this many people could not be simply shot. "We shall have to take steps, however, designed in some way to eliminate them." It was this dilemma which led the SS to experiment with large-scale killings using poison gas. Finally, SS Obersturmführer Christian Wirth seems to have been the inventor of the gas chamber. Hans Frank (May 23, 1900 – October 16, 1946) was a lawyer for the Nazi party during the 1920s and a senior official in Nazi Germany. ... The General Government (in full General government for the occupied Polish areas, in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete) was the name given by Germany to the governing authority in Poland after its occupation by the Wehrmacht in September and October 1939. ... Christian Wirth (24 November 1885 - 26 May 1944) was a senior SS officer during the program to exterminate the Jewish people of occupied Poland during the Second World War, known as Operation Reinhard. ...

Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution (1942–1945)

The dining room of the Wannsee villa, where the Wannsee conference took place. The 15 men seated at the table on January 20, 1942 to discuss the "final solution of the Jewish question"[102] were considered the best and the brightest in the Reich.[103]

Facsimiles of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference. This page lists the number of Jews in every European country.

Auschwitz I

The railway line leading to the death camp at Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

Empty poison gas canisters used to kill inmates and piles of hair shaven from their heads are stored in the museum at Auschwitz II.

The ruins of the Crematorium II gas chamber at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). Holocaust scholar Robert Jan van Pelt comments that more people lost their lives in this room than in any other room on Earth: 500,000 people.[104]

Those present at the conference: Josef Bühler, Adolf Eichmann, Roland Freisler, Reinhard Heydrich, Otto Hofmann, Gerhard Klopfer, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Rudolf Lange, Georg Leibbrandt, Martin Luther, Heinrich Müller, Erich Neumann, Karl Eberhard Schöngarth, Wilhelm Stuckart Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, Einsatz Reinhard, Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhardt in German) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Government and rob their possessions. ... The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. ... The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. ... The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... Otto Adolf Eichmann (known as Adolf Eichmann; March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). ... Judge Freisler Roland Freisler (October 30, 1893 – February 3, 1945) was a prominent and notorious Nazi German judge. ... Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. ... SS-Gruppenführer Otto Hofmann of Nazi Germanys Race and Settlement Main Office, was present at the Wannsee Conference planning the Holocaust against the Jews. ... Gerhard Klopfer (1905 - 1987) was an official of the Nazi Party and assistant to Martin Bormann in the Office of the (Nazi) Party Chancellery. ... Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (April 14, 1890 – April 25, 1947) was a Nazi politician. ... Dr. Rudolf Lange (April 18, 1910- February 23, 1945) was Commander of SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia. ... Georg Leibbrandt (September 5, 1899 - June 16, 1982) was a scholar and politician in the Nazi Party. ... For other people named Martin Luther see: Martin Luther (disambiguation). ... Heinrich Michael Müller (born April 28, 1900 – disappeared after April 29, 1945– date of death unknown, aka Gestapo Müller). A German police official, was head of the Gestapo, the political police of Nazi Germany, and played a leading role in the planning and execution of the Holocaust. ... Erich Neumann (1892 - 1948) was a Nazi politician. ... Dr. Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (1903 - 1946) was a Nazi associated with the Holocaust during World War II. Schöngarth was born in 1903 in the town of Leipzig, Germany. ... Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (November 16, 1902 – November 15, 1953) was a Nazi Party lawyer and official, and a state secretary in the German Interior Ministry. ...

By the end of 1941, Himmler and Heydrich were becoming increasingly impatient with the progress of the Final Solution. Their main opponent was Göring, who had succeeded in exempting Jewish industrial workers from the orders to deport all Jews to the General Government and who had allied himself with the Army commanders who were opposing the extermination of the Jews out of a mixture of economic calculation, distaste for the SS and humanitarian sentiment. Although Göring's power had declined since the defeat of his Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, he still had privileged access to Hitler. SS or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force Steamship (SS) (ship prefix) The United States Secret Service A submarine not powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as listed by NATO reporting name Shortstop...   (German IPA: ) is a generic German term for an air force. ... This article is about the Second World War battle. ...

The Nazis methodically tracked the progress of the Holocaust in thousands of reports and documents. Pictured is the Höfle Telegram sent to Adolf Eichmann in January, 1943, that reported that 1,274,166 Jews had been killed in the four Aktion Reinhard camps during 1942.

Heydrich therefore convened the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 at a villa, Am Großen Wannsee No. 56-58, in the suburbs of Berlin to finalize a plan for the extermination of the Jews.^[105] The plan became known (after Heydrich) as Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard). Present were Heydrich, Eichmann, Heinrich Müller (head of the Gestapo), and representatives of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Ministry for the Interior, the Four Year Plan Office, the Ministry of Justice, the General Government in Poland (where over two million Jews still lived), the Foreign Office, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the Nazi Party, and the office responsible for distributing Jewish property.^[103] Also present was SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Lange, the SD commander in Riga, who, with Friedrich Jeckeln had recently carried out the liquidation of 24,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto in the Rumbula massacre.^[105] The Hofle Telegram. ... Otto Adolf Eichmann (known as Adolf Eichmann; March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Gouvernement and the Bialystok area. ... The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Gouvernement and the Bialystok area. ... Dr. Rudolf Lange (April 18, 1910- February 23, 1945) was Commander of SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia. ... For other uses, see Riga (disambiguation). ... Friedrich Jeckeln (2 February 1895 - 3 February 1946) was an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer who served as an SS and Police Leader in Russia during the Second World War. ...

Michael Berenbaum writes that the 15 men seated at the table were considered the best and the brightest; more than half of them held doctorates from German universities.^[103] Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ...

A plan was presented for killing all the Jews in Europe, including 330,000 Jews in England and 4,000 in Ireland,^[105] although the minutes taken by Eichmann refer to this only through euphemisms, such as " … emigration has now been replaced by evacuation to the East. This operation should be regarded only as a provisional option, though in view of the coming final solution of the Jewish question it is already supplying practical experience of vital importance."^[105]

The officials were told there were 2.3 million Jews in the General Government, 850,000 in Hungary, 1.1 million in the other occupied countries, and up to 5 million in the Soviet Union (although only 3 million of these were in areas under German occupation) —a total of about 6.5 million. These would all be transported by train to extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) in Poland, where those unfit for work would be gassed at once. In some camps, such as Auschwitz, those fit for work would be kept alive for a while, but eventually all would be killed. Göring's representative, Dr. Erich Neumann, gained a limited exemption for some classes of industrial workers. Erich Neumann (1892 - 1948) was a Nazi politician. ...

Extermination camps

During 1942, in addition to Auschwitz, five other camps were designated as extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) for the carrying out of the Reinhard plan.^[124][125] Two of these, Chelmno (also known as Kulmhof) and Majdanek were already functioning as labor camps: these now had extermination facilities added to them. Three new camps were built for the sole purpose of killing large numbers of Jews as quickly as possible, at Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka. A seventh camp, at Maly Trostinets in Belarus, was also used for this purpose. Jasenovac was an extermination camp where mostly ethnic Serbs were killed. The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ... Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp (German name Kulmhof) was an extermination camp of Nazi Germany that was situated 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Łódź, near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German). ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ... Majdanek mausoleum, containing the ashes of cremated victims Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. ... Maly Trostenets (Belarusian: Малы́ Трасьцяне́ц; Russian: Ма́лый Тростене́ц), a small village on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, was the site of a relatively less known but highly efficient — and prolific — Nazi extermination camp. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Treblinka II was a Nazi extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Extermination camps like the one at Treblinka were used in the Holocaust for the systematic genocide of people categorized as sub-humans by the Nazis. ... Operation Reinhard (Aktion Reinhard, Einsatz Reinhard, Aktion Reinhardt or Einsatz Reinhardt in German) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the former General Government and rob their possessions. ... The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp (German name Kulmhof) was an extermination camp of Nazi Germany that was situated 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Łódź, near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German). ... Majdanek mausoleum, containing the ashes of cremated victims Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Treblinka is a small village in the Mazowieckie voivodship (province) of Poland. ... Maly Trascianiec (see alternate spellings), a small village on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, was the site of a Nazi extermination camp. ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ... Languages Serbian Religions Predominantly Serbian Orthodox Christian Related ethnic groups Other Slavic peoples, especially South Slavs See Cognate peoples below (* many Serbs opted for Yugoslav ethnicity) [27] Serbs (Serbian: Срби or Srbi) are a South Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in...

Extermination camps are frequently confused with concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen, which were mostly located in Germany and intended as places of incarceration and forced labor for a variety of enemies of the Nazi regime (such as Communists and gays). They should also be distinguished from slave labor camps, which were set up in all German-occupied countries to exploit the labor of prisoners of various kinds, including prisoners of war. In all Nazi camps there were very high death rates as a result of starvation, disease and exhaustion, but only the extermination camps were designed specifically for mass killing. The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Bergen-Belsen, sometimes referred to as just Belsen, was a German concentration camp in the Nazi era. ...

The extermination camps were run by SS officers, but most of the guards were Ukrainian or Baltic auxiliaries. Regular German soldiers were kept well away.

Gas chambers

"Selection" on the Judenrampe, Auschwitz, May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the Berehov ghetto. It was taken by Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.^[127]

At the extermination camps with gas chambers all the prisoners arrived by train. Sometimes entire trainloads were sent straight to the gas chambers, but usually the camp doctor on duty subjected individuals to selections, where a small percentage were deemed fit to work in the slave labor camps; the majority were taken directly from the platforms to a reception area where all their clothes and other possessions were seized by the Nazis to help fund the war. They were then herded naked into the gas chambers. Usually they were told these were showers or delousing chambers, and there were signs outside saying "baths" and "sauna." They were sometimes given a small piece of soap and a towel so as to avoid panic, and were told to remember where they had put their belongings for the same reason. When they asked for water because they were thirsty after the long journey in the cattle trains, they were told to hurry up, because coffee was waiting for them in the camp, and it was getting cold.^[128] Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ... For other uses, see Gas chamber (disambiguation). ... // Carpathian Ruthenia, aka Transcarpathian Ruthenia, Subcarpathian Rus, Subcarpathia (Ukrainian: Karpats’ka Rus’; Slovak and Czech: Podkarpatská Rus; Hungarian: Kárpátalja; Romanian: Transcarpatia) is a small region of Central Europe, now mostly in western Ukraines Zakarpattia Oblast (Ukrainian: Zakarpats’ka oblast’) and easternmost Slovakia (largely in Prešov kraj... Berehove (Ukrainian: ; Hungarian: ; Rusyn: ; Romanian: ; Russian: , translit. ... The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ...

According to Rudolf Höß, commandant of Auschwitz, bunker 1 held 800 people, and bunker 2 held 1,200.^[129] Once the chamber was full, the doors were screwed shut and solid pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped into the chambers through vents in the side walls, releasing toxic HCN, or hydrogen cyanide. Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to Höß, who estimated that about one third of the victims died immediately.^[130] Joann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."^[131] When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.^[130] Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß (in English commonly Hoess or Höss or rarely Hoeß; November 25, 1900; April 16, 1947) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt. ... Empty poison gas canisters, found by the Allies at the end of World War II Zyklon B (IPA: , also spelled Cyclon B) was the tradename of a cyanide-based insecticide notorious for its use by Nazi Germany against civilians in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek during the Holocaust. ... R-phrases , , , , . S-phrases , , , , , , , , . Flash point −17. ...

The gas was then pumped out, the bodies were removed (which would take up to four hours), gold fillings in their teeth were extracted with pliers by dentist prisoners, and women's hair was cut.^[132] The floor of the gas chamber was cleaned, and the walls whitewashed.^[131] The work was done by the Sonderkommando prisoners, Jews who hoped to buy themselves a few extra months of life. In crematoria 1 and 2, the Sonderkommando lived in an attic above the crematoria; in crematoria 3 and 4, they lived inside the gas chambers.^[133] When the Sonderkommando had finished with the bodies, the SS conducted spot checks to make sure all the gold had been removed from the victims' mouths. If a check revealed that gold had been missed, the Sonderkommando prisoner responsible was thrown into the furnace alive as punishment.^[134] Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp. ...

At first, the bodies were buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, they were dug up and burned. In the spring of 1943, new gas chambers and crematoria were built to accommodate the numbers.^[135]

Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated, since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.

– Rudolf Höß, Auschwitz camp commandant, Nuremberg testimony.^[136] Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß (in English commonly Hoess or Höss or rarely Hoeß; November 25, 1900; April 16, 1947) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt. ...

Jewish resistance

Jews captured and forcibly pulled out from dug outs by the Germans during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The photo is from Jurgen Stroop's report to Heinrich Himmler

Insurgents from Armia Krajowa (the Polish resistance movement) fighting during the Warsaw Uprising

Warsaw Ghetto uprising

• Further information: Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
• For uprisings: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Białystok Ghetto Uprising, Marcinkance Ghetto Uprising, Sobibór extermination camp, Żydowski Związek Walki, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa.
• For Jewish partisans, volunteers, and escapees: Yitzhak Arad, Bielski partisans, Marek Edelman, Masha Bruskina, Eugenio Calò, Jewish Brigade, Jewish partisans, Abba Kovner, Dov Lopatyn, Moše Pijade, Haviva Reik, Special Interrogation Group, Hannah Szenes, Rudolf Vrba, Alfréd Wetzler, Shalom Yoran, Simcha Zorin.
• For how stories were preserved in the Warsaw Ghetto: Emanuel Ringelblum, Oyneg Shabbos (group).

Yehuda Bauer and other historians argue that resistance consisted not only of physical opposition, but of any activity that gave the Jews dignity and humanity in humiliating and inhumane conditions.^[137] The Jewish resistance during the Holocaust was the resistance of the Jewish people against Nazi Germany leading up to and through World War II. Due to the careful organization and overwhelming military might of the Nazi German State and its supporters, many Jews were unable to resist the killings. ... Belligerents Germany (Waffen-SS, SD, OrPo, Gestapo, Wehrmacht) Collaborators (Arajs Kommando, Blue Police, Jewish Police, Lithuanian Police) Jewish resistance (Å»OB, Å»ZW) Polish resistance (AK, GL) Commanders Franz Bürkl Ludwig Hahn Odilo Globocnik Friedrich Krüger Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg Jürgen Stroop Mordechaj Anielewicz† Dawid Apfelbaum† Icchak Cukierman Marek... BiaÅ‚ystok Ghetto Uprising was an insurrection in Polands BiaÅ‚ystok Ghetto against Germany during World War II. It was organised and led by Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa (Polish for Anti-fascist Military Organisation). ... Marcinkance Ghetto Uprising was an insurrection in Polands Marcinkance, now Lithuanias Marcinkonys Ghetto against Germany during World War II. It was organized and led by the leadership of the Jewish community in the small town. ... Sobibór was a Nazi German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. ... Å»ydowski ZwiÄ…zek Walki (Å»ZW, Polish for Jewish Fighting Union) was an underground organisation operating during World War II in the area of Warsaw Ghetto and fighting during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ... Other languages FAQs | Table free Welcome to Wikipedia, the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. ... Yitzhak Arad is a Lithuanian-born Israeli historian and retired IDF brigadier general. ... It has been suggested that The Bielski Brothers be merged into this article or section. ... Marek Edelman, Warsaw University, Warsaw (Poland), April 26, 2005 Marek Edelman (b. ... Masha Bruskina was a 17yo Jewish partisan that was captured by the Germans along with 2 others for killing a German soldier in Minsk in October 1941. ... Eugenio Calò is an official hero of Italy. ... Jewish Brigade recruitment poster: For Vengeance and Salvation! A recruitment drive poster for the Jewish Brigade: Soldiers of 1915-1918: to the flag! (Figure in background represents the Jewish Legion of World War I) The Jewish Brigade was a fighting unit in the British Army composed of volunteers from the... Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. A number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, some comprised of a few escapees from the Jewish ghettos or concentration camps, while others... Abba Kovner Abba Kovner (1918-1987) was a Lithuanian Jewish Hebrew poet, writer, and partisan leader. ... Dov Lopatyn was the head of the Judenrat in Łachwa, Poland (now Lakhva, Belarus) in 1941-1942. ... Pijade bust MoÅ¡e Pijade (1890-1957) was a prominent Yugoslav Communist of Serbian Jewish origin, and a close collaborator of Josip Broz Tito, former President of Yugoslavia. ... Haviva Reik (Chaviva Reich, Havivah Reich) (1914–1944) was one of thirty-two (or thirty-three) Palestinian Jewish parachutists sent by the Jewish Agency and the British Army Special Operations Executive from Palestine on military missions in Nazi-occupied Europe. ... The Special Interrogation Group (SIG) (some sources interpret this acronym as Special Identification Group or Special Intelligence Group) was a British Army unit organized from German-speaking Jewish volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine. ... Hannah Szenes Hannah Szenes (or Chana Senesh) (July 17, 1921 — November 7, 1944) was a Hungarian Jew, one of 17 Jews living in Palestine, now Israel, who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during the Second World War in order to help save the Jews of... Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ... Alfréd Wetzler (1918–1988), who later wrote under the alias Jozef Laník, was a Slovak Jew, and one of a very small number of Jews known to have escaped from the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust. ... Shalom (Simcha) Zorin (1902-1974) was a Jewish Soviet partisan commander in Minsk. ... Emanuel Ringelblum (1900 Buchach-1944 Warsaw) was a Polish-Jewish historian, politician and social worker, known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Notes on the Refugees in ZbÄ…szyn chronicling the deportation of Jews from the town of ZbÄ…szyn, and the so-called Ringelblums Archives of the... One of the milk cans used to hide documents from the Ringelblum Oyneg Shabbos Archive Oyneg Shabbos (Yiddish pronunciation; in Hebrew: Oneg Shabbat, עונג שבת) was the code name of a group led by Jewish historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. ... Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (born 1926) is an historian and scholar of the Holocaust. ...

In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to gloat over panic and despair. Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit."

– Martin Gilbert. The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy.^[138] Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. ...

There are many examples of Jewish resistance, most notably the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of January 1943, when thousands of poorly armed Jewish fighters held the SS at bay for four weeks, and killed several hundred Germans before being crushed by overwhelmingly superior forces. This was followed by the uprising in the Treblinka extermination camp in May 1943, when about 200 inmates escaped from the camp after overpowering the guards. Two weeks later, there was an uprising in the Bialystok ghetto. In September, there was a short-lived uprising in the Vilnius ghetto. In October, 600 Jewish and Russian prisoners attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. About 60 survived and joined the Soviet partisans. On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz staged an uprising. Female prisoners had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and Crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but all 250 were killed soon after. Belligerents Germany (Waffen-SS, SD, OrPo, Gestapo, Wehrmacht) Collaborators (Arajs Kommando, Blue Police, Jewish Police, Lithuanian Police) Jewish resistance (Å»OB, Å»ZW) Polish resistance (AK, GL) Commanders Franz Bürkl Ludwig Hahn Odilo Globocnik Friedrich Krüger Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg Jürgen Stroop Mordechaj Anielewicz† Dawid Apfelbaum† Icchak Cukierman Marek... Białystok (pronounce: [bȋa:wistɔk]) (Belarusian: Беласток, Lithuanian: Balstogė) is the largest city (pop. ... Not to be confused with Vilnius city municipality. ... Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp. ...

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish partisans (see the list at the top of this section) actively fought the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe.^[139] The Jewish Brigade, a unit of 5,000 volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine fought in the British Army. German-speaking volunteers from the Special Interrogation Group performed commando and sabotage operations against the Nazis behind front lines in the Western Desert Campaign. Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. A number of Jewish partisan groups operated across Nazi-occupied Europe, some comprised of a few escapees from the Jewish ghettos or concentration camps, while others... Jewish Brigade recruitment poster: For Vengeance and Salvation! A recruitment drive poster for the Jewish Brigade: Soldiers of 1915-1918: to the flag! (Figure in background represents the Jewish Legion of World War I) The Jewish Brigade was a fighting unit in the British Army composed of volunteers from the... Flag The approximate borders of the British Mandate circa 1922. ... The Special Interrogation Group (SIG) (some sources interpret this acronym as Special Identification Group or Special Intelligence Group) was a British Army unit organized from German-speaking Jewish volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine. ... Combatants  Australia Free France  New Zealand  Poland South Africa  United Kingdom India Italy Germany Commanders to June 22 1941: Archibald Wavell to August 8 1942: Claude Auchinleck to February 1943: Harold Alexander Ugo Cavallero Rodolfo Graziani Erwin Rommel The Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War was the...

In occupied Poland and Soviet territories, thousands of Jews fled into the swamps or forests and joined the partisans, although the partisan movements did not always welcome them. In Lithuania and Belarus, an area with a heavy concentration of Jews, and also an area which suited partisan operations, Jewish partisan groups saved thousands of Jewish civilians from extermination. No such opportunities existed for the Jewish populations of cities such as Budapest. However in Amsterdam, and other parts of the Netherlands, many Jews were active in the Dutch Resistance.^[140] Joining the partisans was an option only for the young and the fit who were willing to leave their families. Many Jewish families preferred to die together rather than be separated. For other uses, see Budapest (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Amsterdam (disambiguation). ... Members of the Dutch Eindhoven Resistance with troops of the US 101st Airborne in front of the Eindhoven cathedral during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. ...

"Many people think the Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter, and that's not true—it's absolutely not true. I worked closely with many Jewish people in the Resistance, and I can tell you, they took much greater risks than I did."

– Pieter Meerburg. The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage.^[141]

For the great majority of Jews resistance could take only the passive forms of delay, evasion, negotiation, bargaining and, where possible, bribery of German officials. The Nazis encouraged this by forcing the Jewish communities to police themselves, through bodies such as the Reich Association of Jews (Reichsvereinigung der Juden) in Germany and the Jewish Councils (Judenrate) in the urban ghettos in occupied Poland. They held out the promise of concessions in exchange for each surrender, enmeshing the Jewish leadership so deeply in well-intentioned compromise that a decision to stand and fight was never possible. Holocaust survivor Alexander Kimel wrote: "The youth in the Ghettos dreamed about fighting. I believe that although there were many factors that inhibited our responses, the most important factors were isolation and historical conditioning to accepting martyrdom."^[142] Judenrats, German for Jewish council, were administrative bodies that the Germans required Jews to form in each ghetto in General Government (the Nazi-occupied teritory of Poland) and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ...

The historical conditioning of the Jewish communities of Europe to accept persecution and avert disaster through compromise and negotiation was the most important factor in the failure to resist until the very end. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place only when the Jewish population had been reduced from 500,000 to 100,000, and it was obvious that no further compromise was possible. Paul Johnson writes: "The Jews had been persecuted for a millennium and a half and had learned from long experience that resistance cost lives rather than saved them. Their history, their theology, their folklore, their social structure, even their vocabulary trained them to negotiate, to pay, to plead, to protest, not to fight."^[143] Paul Johnson (born Paul Bede Johnson on 2 November 1928 in Manchester, England) is a British Roman Catholic journalist, historian, speechwriter and author. ...

The Jewish communities were also systematically deceived about German intentions, and were cut off from most sources of news from the outside world. The Germans told the Jews that they were being deported to work camps – euphemistically calling it "resettlement in the East" – and maintained this illusion through elaborate deceptions all the way to the gas chamber doors (which were marked with labels stating that the chambers were for removal of lice) to avoid uprisings. As photographs testify, Jews disembarked at the railway stations at Auschwitz and other extermination camps carrying sacks and suitcases, clearly having no idea of the fate that awaited them. Rumours of the reality of the extermination camps filtered back only slowly to the ghettos, and were usually not believed, just as they were not believed when couriers such as Jan Karski, the Polish resistance fighter, conveyed them to the western Allies.^[144] Before a wall map of the Warsaw Ghetto at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jan Karski recalls his secret 1942 missions into the Nazi prison-city-within-a-city. ...

Climax

Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in June 1942. He was succeeded as head of the RSHA by Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann, under Himmler's close supervision, oversaw the climax of the Final Solution. During 1943 and 1944, the extermination camps worked at a furious rate to kill the hundreds of thousands of people shipped to them by rail from almost every country within the German sphere of influence. By the spring of 1944, up to 8,000 people were being gassed every day at Auschwitz.^[145] For other uses, see Prague (disambiguation). ... Ernst Kaltenbrunner (October 4, 1903 – October 16, 1946) was a senior Nazi official during World War II. He was the highest ranking SS leader to face trial. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ...

Despite the high productivity of the war industries based in the Jewish ghettos in the General Government, during 1943 they were liquidated, and their populations shipped to the camps for extermination. The largest of these operations, the deportation of 100,000 people from the Warsaw Ghetto in early 1943, provoked the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which was suppressed with great brutality. At the same time, rail shipments arrived regularly from western and southern Europe. Few Jews were shipped from the occupied Soviet territories to the camps: the killing of Jews in this zone was left in the hands of the SS, aided by locally recruited auxiliaries. In any case, by the end of 1943 the Germans had been driven from most Soviet territory. Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, former capital of Poland in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and... Belligerents Germany (Waffen-SS, SD, OrPo, Gestapo, Wehrmacht) Collaborators (Arajs Kommando, Blue Police, Jewish Police, Lithuanian Police) Jewish resistance (ŻOB, ŻZW) Polish resistance (AK, GL) Commanders Franz Bürkl Ludwig Hahn Odilo Globocnik Friedrich Krüger Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg Jürgen Stroop Mordechaj Anielewicz† Dawid Apfelbaum† Icchak Cukierman Marek...

Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority on the German railways, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation after the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of 1942 and the escalating Allied air attacks on German industry and transport. Army leaders and economic managers complained at this diversion of resources and at the killing of irreplaceable skilled Jewish workers. By 1944, moreover, it was evident to most Germans not blinded by Nazi fanaticism that Germany was losing the war. Many senior officials began to fear the retribution that might await Germany and them personally for the crimes being committed in their name. But the power of Himmler and the SS within the German Reich was too great to resist, and Himmler could always evoke Hitler's authority for his demands. Belligerents Germany Romania Italy Hungary Croatia Soviet Union Commanders Adolf Hitler Friedrich Paulus # Erich von Manstein Wolfram von Richthofen Petre Dumitrescu Constantin Constantinescu Italo Gariboldi Gusztáv Vitéz Jány Viktor Pavičić Joseph Stalin Vasily Chuikov Aleksandr Vasilevsky Georgiy Zhukov Semyon Timoshenko Konstantin Rokossovsky Rodion Malinovsky Andrei Yeremenko...

Budapest, Hungary - Captured Jewish women in Wesselényi Street, 20-22 October 1944

Budapest, Hungary - Hungarian and German soldiers drive arrested Jews into the municipal theatre dated October 1944.

In October 1943, Himmler gave a speech to senior Nazi Party officials gathered in Posen (Poznan in western Poland). Here he came closer than ever before to stating explicitly that he was intent on exterminating the Jews of Europe: Coordinates: , Country Voivodeship Powiat city county Gmina PoznaÅ„ Established 8th century City Rights 1253 Government  - Mayor Ryszard Grobelny Area  - City 261. ... The Poznan is also a breed of horse. ...

I may here in this closest of circles allude to a question which you, my party comrades, have all taken for granted, but which has become for me the most difficult question of my life, the Jewish question … I ask of you that what I say in this circle you really only hear and never speak of … We come to the question: how is it with the women and children? I have resolved even here on a completely clear solution. I do not consider myself justified in eradicating the men—so to speak killing them or ordering them to be killed—and allowing the avengers in the shape of the children to grow up … The difficult decision had to be taken, to cause this people to disappear from the earth.

The audience for this speech included Admiral Karl Dönitz and Armaments Minister Albert Speer, both of whom successfully claimed at the Nuremberg trials that they had had no knowledge of the Final Solution. The text of this speech was not known at the time of their trials. Karl Dönitz (IPA pronunciation:  ) (born 16 September 1891; died 24 December 1980) was a German naval leader, who commanded the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during the second half of World War II. Dönitz was also President of Germany for 23 days after Adolf Hitlers suicide. ... For the son of Albert Speer, also an architect, see Albert Speer (the younger). ... For the 1947 Soviet film about the trials, see Nuremberg Trials (film). ...

The scale of extermination slackened somewhat at the beginning of 1944 once the ghettos in occupied Poland were emptied, but in March 19, 1944, Hitler ordered the military occupation of Hungary, and Eichmann was dispatched to Budapest to supervise the deportation of Hungary's 800,000 Jews. Hitler had personally complained to the Hungarian regent Admiral Miklos Horthy on the previous day, March 18, 1944, that: For other uses, see Budapest (disambiguation). ... Admiral Horthy inspecting the German fleet with Adolf Hitler Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (Vitéz Nagybányai Horthy Miklós in Hungarian) (June 18, 1868–February 9, 1957) was a Hungarian Admiral and statesman and served as the Regent of Hungary from March 1, 1920 until October 15, 1944. ...

More than half of them were shipped to Auschwitz in the course of the year. The commandant, Rudolf Höß, said at his trial that he killed 400,000 Hungarian Jews in three months. This operation met strong opposition within the Nazi hierarchy, and there were some suggestions that Hitler should offer the Allies a deal under which the Hungarian Jews would be spared in exchange for a favorable peace settlement. There were unofficial negotiations in Istanbul between Himmler's agents, British agents, and representatives of Jewish organizations, and at one point an attempt by Eichmann to exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks—the so-called "blood for goods" proposal—but there was no real possibility of such a deal being struck (see Joel Brand and Rudolf Kastner). Location of Istanbul on the Bosphorus Strait, Turkey Coordinates: , Country Turkey Region Province Istanbul Founded 667 BC as Byzantium Roman/Byzantine period AD 330 as Nova Roma (original name given in 330 and used during Constantines reign) and later Constantinople (following Constantines death in 337) Ottoman period 1453... Joel Brand Joel Brand (1907 – 1964) was a Hungarian Jew who played a prominent role in trying to save the Hungarian Jewish community from deportation to the German death camp at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. ... Rudolf Kastner Rudolf (RezsÅ‘) Kastner (Kasztner), also known as Israel (Yisrael) Kastner, (1906, Cluj, Transylvania–March 3, 1957, Tel Aviv, Israel) was the de facto head of a small Jewish organization in Budapest, Hungary known as the Vaadat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Vaada), or Aid and Rescue Committee, during the Nazi...

Escapes, publication of news of the death camps (April–June 1944)

Bratislava, June–July 1944. Rudolf Vrba (right) escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, bringing the first credible news to the world of the mass murder that was taking place there. Arnost Rosin (left), escaped on May 27, 1944.^[147]

Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki (1941)

Escapes from the camps were few, but not unknown. The few Auschwitz escapes that succeeded were made possible by the Polish underground inside the camp and local people outside.^[148] In 1940, the Auschwitz commandant reported that "the local population is fanatically Polish and … prepared to take any action against the hated SS camp personnel. Every prisoner who managed to escape can count on help the moment he reaches the wall of a first Polish farmstead."^[149] , Nickname: Beauty on the Danube Country  Slovakia Region Districts Rivers Elevation 134 m (440 ft) Coordinates , Highest point Devínska Kobyla  - elevation 514 m (1,686 ft) Lowest point Danube River  - elevation 126 m (413 ft) Area 367. ... Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ...

In February 1942, an escaped inmate from the Chelmno extermination camp, Jacob Grojanowski, reached the Warsaw Ghetto, where he gave detailed information about the Chelmno camp to the Oneg Shabbat group. His report, which became known as the Grojanowski Report, was smuggled out of the ghetto through the channels of the Polish underground to the Delegatura, and reached London by June 1942. It is unclear what was done with the report at that point.^{[112][150][151][152]} In the meantime, by the 1st of February, the United States Office of War Information had decided not to release information about the extermination of the Jews because it was felt that it would mislead the public into thinking the war was simply a Jewish problem.^[153] The CheÅ‚mno extermination camp (German name Kulmhof) was an extermination camp of Nazi Germany that was situated 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Łódź, near a small village called CheÅ‚mno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German). ... Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, former capital of Poland in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and... One of the milk cans used to hide documents from the Ringelblum Oyneg Shabbos Archive Oyneg Shabbos (Yiddish pronunciation; in Hebrew: Oneg Shabbat, עונג שבת) was the code name of a group led by Jewish historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. ... Grojanowski Report was written by Szlamek Bajler, under the pseudonym of Jacob Grojanowski, who escaped from the Chelmno extermination camp and described in details the atrocities that he witnessed there. ... Delegatura SiÅ‚ Zbrojnych na Kraj (Delegature of the Polish Forces at Home) was a Polish anticommunist resistance organization, formed May 7, 1945 by commander-in-chief of Polish forces general WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Anders as a continuation of NIE organization. ... The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. ...

In December 1942, the western Allies released a declaration, publicized on the New York Times front page, that described how "Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe" was being carried out and which declared that they "condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination."^[154][155] This article is about the independent states that comprised the Allies. ...

In 1943 the news about gassing Jews was broadcast from London to The Netherlands. It was also published in illegal newspapers of the Dutch resistance, like in the issue of Het Parool of September 27, 1943. However, the news was so unbelievable that many assumed it was merely war propaganda. The publications were halted because they were counter-productive for the Dutch resistance. Nevertheless, many Jews were warned that they would be murdered, but as escape was impossible for most of them, they preferred to believe that the warnings were false.^[156][157] Members of the Dutch Eindhoven Resistance with troops of the US 101st Airborne in front of the Eindhoven cathedral during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. ...

In September 1940, Captain Witold Pilecki, a member of the Polish underground and a soldier of the Home Army, worked out a plan to enter Auschwitz and volunteered to be sent there, the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz. He organized an underground network Związek Organizacji Wojskowej - (eng.Union of Military Organizations) that was ready to initiate an uprising but it was decided that the probability of success was too low for the uprising to succeed. UMO's numerous and detailed reports became later a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz with information that became the basis of a two-part report in August 1943 that was sent to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in London. The report included details about the gas chambers, about "selection," and about the sterilization experiments. It stated that there were three crematoria in Birkenau able to burn 10,000 people daily, and that 30,000 people had been gassed in one day. The author wrote: "History knows no parallel of such destruction of human life." Raul Hilberg writes that the report was filed away with a note that there was no indication as to the reliability of the source.^[158] When Pilecki returned to Poland after the war the communist authorities arrested and accused him of spying for the Polish government in exile. He was sentenced to death in a show trial and was executed on May 25, 1948. Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [vitɔld pileʦki]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, founder of the resistance movement Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) and member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). ... Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007 in Williston, Vermont) was one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. ... Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [vitɔld pileʦki]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, founder of the resistance movement Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) and member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). ... The Government of the Polish Republic in Exile was the government of Poland after the country had been occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union during September-October 1939. ...

Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, Jewish inmates, escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944, eventually reaching Slovakia. The 32-page document they dictated to Jewish officials about the mass murder at Auschwitz became known as the Vrba-Wetzler report. Vrba had an eidetic memory and had worked on the Judenrampe, where Jews disembarked from the trains to be "selected" either for the gas chamber or slave labor. The level of detail with which he described the transports allowed Slovakian officials to compare his account with their own deportation records, and the corroboration convinced the Allies to take the report seriously.^[147][159] Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ... Alfred Wetzler, alias Josef Lanik (1918-199?) was a Slovakian Jew who was one of the few people known to have escaped from the Auschwitz death camp. ... One of the maps from the Vrba-Weztler report The Vrba-Wetzler report, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler statement, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 32-page document about the German Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust. ... Eidetic memory, photographic memory, or total recall is the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme accuracy and in abundant volume. ...

Two other Auschwitz inmates, Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz escaped on May 27, 1944, arriving in Slovakia on June 6, the day of the Normandy landing (D-Day). Hearing about Normandy, they believed the war was over and got drunk to celebrate, using dollars they'd smuggled out of the camp. They were arrested for violating currency laws, and spent eight days in prison, before the Judenrat paid their fines. The additional information they offered the Judenrat was added to Vrba and Wetzler's report and became known as the Auschwitz Protocols. They reported that, between May 15 and May 27, 1944, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at Birkenau, and had been killed at an unprecedented rate, with human fat being used to accelerate the burning.^[160] Belligerents Australia Canada Free France Netherlands Norway Poland United Kingdom United States Nazi Germany The Normandy Landings were the first operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord. ... Land on Normandy In military parlance, D-Day is a term often used to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. ... Judenrats, German for Jewish council, were administrative bodies that the Germans required Jews to form in each ghetto in General Government (the Nazi-occupied teritory of Poland) and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ...

The BBC and The New York Times published material from the Vrba-Wetzler report on June 15^[161] and June 20, 1944. The subsequent pressure from world leaders persuaded Miklos Horthy to bring the mass deportations of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz to a halt on July 9, saving up to 200,000 Jews from the extermination camps.^[160] Admiral Horthy inspecting the German fleet with Adolf Hitler Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (Vitéz Nagybányai Horthy Miklós in Hungarian) (June 18, 1868–February 9, 1957) was a Hungarian Admiral and statesman and served as the Regent of Hungary from March 1, 1920 until October 15, 1944. ...

Death marches (1944–1945)

Children from Auschwitz liberated by the Red Army in January, 1945. Although most children were immediately killed upon arrival, this group includes Jewish twins kept alive to be used in Mengele's medical experiments

By mid 1944, the Final Solution had largely run its course. Those Jewish communities within easy reach of the Nazi regime had been largely exterminated, in proportions ranging from more than 90 percent in Poland to about 25 percent in France. In May, Himmler claimed in a speech that "The Jewish question in Germany and the occupied countries has been solved."^[162] During 1944, in any case, the task became steadily more difficult. German armies were evicted from the Soviet Union, the Balkans and Italy, and German allies were either defeated or were switching sides to the Allies. In June, the western Allies landed in France. Allied air attacks and the operations of partisans made rail transport increasingly difficult, and the objections of the military to the diversion of rail transport for carrying Jews to Poland more urgent and harder to ignore. Dachau concentration-camp inmates on a death march through a German village in April 1945. ...

At this time, as the Soviet armed forces approached, the camps in eastern Poland were closed down, any surviving inmates being shipped west to camps closer to Germany, first to Auschwitz and later to Gross Rosen in Silesia. Auschwitz itself was closed as the Soviets advanced through Poland. The last 13 prisoners, all women, were killed in Auschwitz II on November 25, 1944; records show they were "unmittelbar getötet" ("killed outright"), leaving open whether they were gassed or otherwise disposed of.^[163] KL Gross-Rosen was a German concentration camp, located in Gross-Rosen. ... Silesia (English pronunciation [], Czech: ; German: ; Latin: ; Polish: ; Silesian: Åšlůnsk) is a historical region in central Europe, located along the upper and middle Oder River, upper Vistula River, and along the Sudetes, Carpathian (Silesian Beskids) mountain range. ...

Despite the desperate military situation, great efforts were made to conceal evidence of what had happened in the camps. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, mass graves dug up and the corpses cremated, and Polish farmers were induced to plant crops on the sites to give the impression that they had never existed. In October 1944, Himmler, who is believed to have been negotiating a secret deal with the Allies behind Hitler's back, ordered an end to the Final Solution. But the hatred of the Jews in the ranks of the SS was so strong that Himmler's order was generally ignored.^{[citation needed]} Local commanders continued to kill Jews, and to shuttle them from camp to camp by forced "death marches" until the last weeks of the war.^[164]

Already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, prisoners were forced to march for tens of miles in the snow to train stations; then transported for days at a time without food or shelter in freight trains with open carriages; and forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot. Around 250,000 Jews died during these marches.^[165]

The largest and best-known of the death marches took place in January 1945, when the Soviet army advanced on Poland. Nine days before the Soviets arrived at Auschwitz, the SS marched 60,000 prisoners out of the camp toward Wodzislaw, 56 km (35 miles) away, where they were put on freight trains to other camps. Around 15,000 died on the way. Elie Wiesel and his father, Shlomo, were among the marchers: Elie Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928)[1] is a writer, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. ...

An icy wind blew in violent gusts. But we marched without faltering.
Pitch darkness. Every now and then, an explosion in the night. They had orders to fire on any who could not keep up. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of this pleasure. If one of us had stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch.
Near me, men were collapsing in the dirty snow. Shots.^[166]

Liberation

A grave inside Bergen-Belsen

Starving prisoners in Mauthausen camp liberated on May 5, 1945

The first major camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on July 23, 1944. Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on January 27, 1945; Buchenwald by the Americans on April 11; Bergen-Belsen by the British on April 15; Dachau by the Americans on April 29; Ravensbrück by the Soviets on the same day; Mauthausen by the Americans on May 5; and Theresienstadt by the Soviets on May 8.^[167] Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Colonel William W. Quinn of the U.S. 7th Army said of Dachau: "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."^[168][169] Belligerents Soviet Union Germany Commanders 1st Belorussian Front – Georgiy Zhukov 2nd Belorussian Front – Konstantin Rokossovsky 1st Ukrainian Front – Ivan Konev Army Group Vistula – Gotthard Heinrici then Kurt von Tippelskirch[1] Army Group Centre – Ferdinand Schörner Berlin Defence Area – Hellmuth Reymann then Helmuth Weidling #[2] Strength Total strength 2,500... The front cover of Time magazine, May 7, 1945. ... Combatants Germany Soviet Union Czech Insurgents Commanders Ferdinand Schörner Ivan Konev Strength 900,000 2,000,000 Casualties Unknown 11,997 killed or missing, 40,501 wounded or sick (52,498 casualties[1]) The Prague Offensive (Russian:Пражская наступательная операция, Prazhskaya nastupatelnaya operacia, Prague Offensive Operation) was the last major battle of... Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945. ... Majdanek mausoleum, containing the ashes of cremated victims Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. ... Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... Buchenwald is the German for beech forest. A koolio forest in the hill range Elm (Höhenzug Elm), in the Helmstedt and Wolfenbüttel districts, Lower Saxony A German name for a Hungarian region Bakony Forest (Hungarian: , German: ) A Nazi concentration camp in Germany (German: ); See Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald... Bergen-Belsen, sometimes referred to as just Belsen, was a German concentration camp in the Nazi era. ... The main entrance just after the liberation Memorial at the camp in 1997 Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich... Mauthausen is a small town in Upper Austria about 20 kilometers east of the city of Linz. ... Fortress plan, 1869 Terezín (German: Theresienstadt) is name of former military fortress and garrison town in Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. ... Treblinka is a small village in the Mazowieckie voivodship (province) of Poland. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ...

In most of the camps discovered by the Soviets, almost all the prisoners had already been removed, leaving only a few thousand alive—7,000 inmates were found in Auschwitz, including 180 children who had been experimented on by doctors.^[171] Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at Bergen-Belsen by the British 11th Armoured Division,^[172] 13,000 corpses lay unburied, and another 10,000 died from typhus or malnutrition over the following weeks.^[173] The British forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves.^[174] For the unrelated disease caused by Salmonella typhi, see Typhoid fever. ...

The BBC's Richard Dimbleby described the scenes that greeted him and the British Army at Belsen:^[175] Richard Dimbleby CBE (May 25, 1913–December 22, 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster. ...

Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms ... He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.

Victims and death toll

Members of the Sonderkommando burn corpses in the fire pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, Poland.^[176]

The number of victims depends on which definition of "the Holocaust" is used. Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia write in The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust that the term is commonly defined^[3] as the mass murder, and attempt to wipe out, European Jewry, which would bring the total number of victims to just under six million — around 78 percent of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe at the time.^[186] Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine in the Janowska concentration camp. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... Lucy Dawidowicz wrote the book, The War Against the Jews. ...

Broader definitions include between 220,000 and 500,000 Romani, and the 200,000 disabled and mentally ill who were also targeted for eradication. A broader definition still includes political and religious dissenters, two to three million Soviet POWs, and 5,000 to 15,000 gay men, bringing the death toll to nine million. This rises to 11 million if the deaths of 1.8 to 2 million ethnic Poles are included. The broadest definition would include 6 million Soviet civilians, raising the death toll to 17 million.^[3] R.J. Rummel estimates the total democide death toll of Nazi Germany to be 21 million. Other estimates put total casualties of Soviet Union's citizens alone to about 26 million^[187] Romani (or Romany) relates to: The Roma people, sometimes referred to as Gypsies. Romani language, the language of the Roma. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Rudolph Joseph Rummel (born October 21, 1932) is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii and alternative historian. ... Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder. Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the legal definition...

Since 1945, the most commonly cited figure for the total number of Jews killed has been six million. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, writes that there is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed. The figure most commonly used is the six million cited by Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official. Early calculations range from 5.1 million from Raul Hilberg, to 5.95 million from Jacob Leschinsky. Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust estimate 5.59–5.86 million.^[188] A study led by Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin suggests 5.29–6.2 million.^[189][190] Yad Vashem writes that the main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar and postwar censuses and population estimates, and Nazi documentation on deportations and murders.^[189] Its Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names currently holds close to 3 million names of Holocaust victims, all accessible online. Yad Vashem continues its project of collecting names of Jewish victims from historical documents and individual memories.^[191] The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ... For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ... Otto Adolf Eichmann (known as Adolf Eichmann; March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962) was a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). ... Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007 in Williston, Vermont) was one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. ... The Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust was published in 1990, in tandem Hebrew and English editions, by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Authority. ...

Jews

Entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1945

Hilberg's estimate of 5.1 million, in the third edition of The Destruction of the European Jews, includes over 800,000 who died from "ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 killed in open-air shootings; and up to 2,900,000 who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll of Jews in Poland as up to 3,000,000.^[192] Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they typically include only those deaths for which records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment.^[193] Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ...

British historian Martin Gilbert used a similar approach in his Atlas of the Holocaust, but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.^[194] Lucy S. Dawidowicz used pre-war census figures to estimate that 5.934 million Jews died (see table below) here).^[195] Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. ... Lucy S. Davidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990), was a American historian, and an author of books in modern Jewish history in particular the Holocaust. ...

There were about 8 to 10 million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by the Nazis (the uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The six million killed in the Holocaust thus represent 60 to 75 percent of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, over 90 percent were killed. The same proportion were killed in Latvia and Lithuania, but most of Estonia's Jews were evacuated in time. Of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived. Although many German Jews emigrated before 1939, the majority of these fled to Czechoslovakia, France or the Netherlands, from where they were later deported to their deaths. In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed. More than 50 percent were killed in Belgium, Hungary, and Romania. It is likely that a similar proportion were killed in Belarus and Ukraine, but these figures are less certain. Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy, and Norway.

The number of people killed at the major extermination camps is estimated as: Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1.4 million;^[107] Treblinka: 870,000;^[122] Belzec: 600,000;^[110] Majdanek: 360,000;^[116] Chelmno: 320,000;^[112] Sobibór: 250,000.^[120] This gives a total of over 3.8 million; of these, 80–90% were estimated to be Jews. These seven camps thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.^[177] Extermination camps were two types of facilities that Nazi Germany built during World War II for the systematic killing of millions of people in what has become known as the Holocaust. ... Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ... Treblinka is a small village in the Mazowieckie voivodship (province) of Poland. ... Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... Majdanek mausoleum, containing the ashes of cremated victims Majdanek was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. ... Chełmno is a town in northern Poland with 22,000 inhabitants (1995) and the historical capitol of Chelmno Land also known as Kulmland. ... Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard. ...

In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent.^{[citation needed]} Another 800,000 to one million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the Einsatzgruppen killings were frequently undocumented).^[197] Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland before they could be deported.

By country

The following figures from Lucy Dawidowicz show the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe by (pre-war) country:^[177] Lucy S. Davidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990), was a American historian, and an author of books in modern Jewish history in particular the Holocaust. ...

Non Jewish victims

Note: Scholars differ on whether the definition of the Holocaust should also include the millions of non-Jewish victims of Nazi genocide.^[3] The three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania The terms Baltic countries, Baltic Sea countries, Baltic states, and Balticum refer to slightly different combinations of countries in the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea. ... For other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Moravia (disambiguation). ... State motto: Belarusian: Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Minsk Official language Belarusian, Russian Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until January 1, 1919 December 30, 1922 August 25, 1991 Area  - Total  - Water (%) Ranked 6th in the USSR 207,600 km² negligible Population  - Total   - Density Ranked 5th in the USSR... State motto: Ukrainian: Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Kiev Official language Ukrainian and Russian Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until December 25, 1917 December 30, 1922 August 24, 1991 Area  - Total  - Water (%) Ranked 3rd in the USSR 603,700 km² negligible Population  - Total   - Density Ranked 2nd in the... General location of the political entities known as Yugoslavia. ... State motto: Russian: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Moscow Official language Russian Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until November 7, 1917 December 30, 1922 December 12, 1991 (independence) Area  - Total  - Water (%) Ranked 1st in the USSR 17,075,200 km² 13% Population  - Total   - Density Ranked 1st in the...

Slavs

One of Hitler's ambitions at the start of the war was to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all Slavs from their native lands so as to make living space for German settlers. This plan of genocide^[198] was to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25–30 years.^[199] This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Distribution of Slavic people by language The Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal           (German for habitat or literally living space) was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. ...

Ethnic Poles

Execution of Poles by Einsatzkommando, Leszno, October 1939

Announcement of death penalty for Poles helping Jews

Polish civilians executed in Warsaw

Auschwitz I patch with the letter "P", required wear for Polish inmates

The actions taken against ethnic Poles were not on the scale of the genocide of the Jews. Most Polish Jews (90%) perished during the Holocaust, while most Christian Poles (94%) survived the brutal German occupation.^[200] German Nazi planners in November 1939 called for nothing less than "the complete destruction" of the Polish people.^[201] "All Poles", Heinrich Himmler swore, "will disappear from the world". The Polish state under German occupation was to be cleared of ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.^[202] Of the Poles, by 1952 only about 3–4 million of them were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland, and then only to serve as slaves for German settlers. They were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist. On August 22, 1939, about one week before the onset of the war, Hitler "prepared, for the moment only in the East, my 'Death's Head' formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need."^[203] For other uses, see Badge (disambiguation) NY NJ Port Authority Police Department Badge. ... This article details the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against ethnic Poles during World War II. 3 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, most of them civilians, killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. ... The pacification operations in German-occupied Poland were the unlawful use of military force and punitive measures conducted during World War II by the German state with the goal of suppressing any Polish resistance. ... ...

Nazi planners decided against a genocide of ethnic Poles on the same scale as against ethnic Jews, it could not proceed in the short run since "such a solution to the Polish question would represent a burden to the German people into the distant future, and everywhere rob us of all understanding, not least in that neighbouring peoples would have to reckon at some appropriate time, with a similar fate".^[201] Between 1.8 and 2.1 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished in German hands during the course of the war, about four-fifths of whom were ethnic Poles with the remaining fifth being ethnic minorities of Ukrainians and Belarusians, the vast majority of them civilians.^[179][180] At least 200,000 of these victims died in concentration camps with about 146,000 being killed in Auschwitz. Many others died as a result of general massacres such as in the Warsaw Uprising where between 120,000 and 200,000 civilians were killed.^[204] The policy of the Germans in Poland included diminishing food rations, conscious lowering of the state of hygiene and depriving the population of medical services. The general mortality rate rose from 13 to 18 per thousand.^[205] Overall, about 5.6 million of the victims WW2 were Polish citizens,^[180] both Jewish and non-Jewish, and over the course of the war Poland lost 16 percent of its pre-war population; approx. 3.1 million of the 3.3 million Polish Jews and approx. 2 million of the 31.7 non-Jewish Polish citizens died at German hands during the war.^[206] Over 90 percent of the death toll came through non-military losses, as most of the civilians were targeted by various deliberate actions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.^[204] Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi German concentration camps. ... For other uses, see Warsaw Uprising (disambiguation). ...

Ethnic Yugoslavs

In the Balkans, up to 581,000 Yugoslavs were killed by the Nazis and their Ustaše fascist allies in Yugoslavia.^[207][208] German forces, under express orders from Hitler, fought with a special vengeance against the Serbs, who were considered Untermensch.^[209] The Ustaše collaborators conducted a systematic extermination of large numbers of people for political, religious or racial reasons. The most numerous victims were Serbs. Balkan redirects here. ... An UstaÅ¡e guard pose among the bodies of prisoners murdered in the Jasenovac concentration camp The UstaÅ¡e (also known as Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian extreme nationalist movement. ... General location of the political entities known as Yugoslavia. ... Untermensch (German for under man, sub-man, sub-human; plural: Untermenschen) is a term from Nazi racial ideology used to describe inferior people, especially the masses from the East, that is Jews, Gypsies, Soviet Bolsheviks, homosexual men, and anyone else who was not an Aryan (i. ... An UstaÅ¡e guard pose among the bodies of prisoners murdered in the Jasenovac concentration camp The UstaÅ¡e (also known as Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian extreme nationalist movement. ... Languages Serbian Religions Predominantly Serbian Orthodox Christian Related ethnic groups Other Slavic peoples, especially South Slavs See Cognate peoples below (* many Serbs opted for Yugoslav ethnicity) [27] Serbs (Serbian: Срби or Srbi) are a South Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in...

Bosniaks and Croats were also victims of Jasenovac. According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum: Language(s) Bosnian Religion(s) Predominantly Sunni Islam Related ethnic groups Slavs (South Slavs) The Bosniaks or Bosniacs[1] (Bosnian: Bošnjaci, IPA: ) are a South Slavic people, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) and the Sandžak region of Serbia and Montenegro, with a smaller autochthonous population also... Languages Croatian Religions Predominantly Roman Catholic Related ethnic groups Slavs South Slavs Croats (Croatian: Hrvati) are a South Slavic people mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. ...

"The Ustaša authorities established numerous concentration camps in Croatia between 1941 and 1945. These camps were used to isolate and murder Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims [Bosniaks], and other non-Catholic minorities, as well as Croatian political and religious opponents of the regime."

The USHMM and Jewish Virtual Library report between 56,000 and 97,000 persons were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp.^{[210][211][212]} However, Yad Vashem reports 600,000 deaths at Jasenovac.^[213] Exterior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a national institution located adjacent to The National Mall in Washington, DC, dedicated to documenting, studying, and interpreting the history of the Holocaust. ... The Jewish Virtual Library is an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), notable for its strong pro-Israel views. ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ... The Hall of Names containing books of all those who perished in the Holocaust. ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ...

As per the most recent study, Bosnjaci u Jasenovackom logoru ("Bosniaks in Jasenovac concentration camp") by the author Nihad Halilbegovic, at least 103,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslim Slavs) perished during Holocaust at the hands of the Nazi regime and Croatian Ustaše. According to the study "unknown is the full number of Bosniaks who were murdered under Serb or Croat alias or national name" and "large numbers of Bosniaks were killed and listed under Roma populations", therefore in advance sentenced to death and extermination.^[214][215] Language(s) Bosnian Religion(s) Predominantly Sunni Islam Related ethnic groups Slavs (South Slavs) The Bosniaks or Bosniacs[1] (Bosnian: BoÅ¡njaci, IPA: ) are a South Slavic people, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) and the Sandžak region of Serbia and Montenegro, with a smaller autochthonous population also... Languages Romani, languages of native region Religions Christianity, Islam Related ethnic groups South Asians (Desi) The Romani people (as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies are an ethnic group living in many communities all over the world. ...

East Slavs

In Belarus, Nazi Germany imposed a regime in the country that was responsible for burning down some 9,000 villages, deporting some 380,000 people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. More than 600 villages, like Khatyn, were burned along with their entire population and at least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all of their inhabitants killed. Altogether, 1,670,000 civilians (18 percent of the population) were killed during the three years of German occupation.^[216] including 245,000 Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen.^[195] Soviet partisan fighters behind German front lines in Belarus in 1943 The occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany occurred as part of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) and ended in August 1944 with the Soviet Operation Bagration. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Statue of the only surviving man from Khatyn, holding his dead child. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ...

Soviet POWs

Soviet POWs in German captivity

According to Michael Berenbaum, between two and three million Soviet prisoners-of-war—or around 57 percent of all Soviet POWs—died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions between June 1941 and May 1945, and most those during their first year of captivity. According to other estimates by Daniel Goldhagen, an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs died in eight months in 1941–42, with a total of 3.5 million by mid-1944.^[217] The USHMM has estimated that 3.3 million of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs died in German custody—compared to 8,300 of 231,000 British and American prisoners.^[218] The death rates decreased as the POWs were needed to work as slaves to help the German war effort; by 1943, half a million of them had been deployed as slave labor.^[178] Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ... Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (born 1959) is an American political scientist. ... Interior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exterior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum viewed from Raoul Wallenberg Place (15th St. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Slavery is any of a number of related conditions involving control of a person against his or her will, enforced by violence or other clear forms of coercion. ...

Romani people

Romani arrivals in the Belzec extermination camp, 1940.

Map of persecution of the Roma.

Because the Roma and Sinti are traditionally a secretive people with a culture based on oral history, less is known about their experience of the genocide than about that of any other group.^[219][220] Yehuda Bauer writes that the lack of information can be attributed to the Roma's distrust and suspicion, and to their humiliation, because some of the basic taboos of Romani culture regarding hygiene and sexual contact were violated at Auschwitz. Bauer writes that "most [Roma] could not relate their stories involving these tortures; as a result, most kept silent and thus increased the effects of the massive trauma they had undergone."^[221] Bełżec was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. ... Roma arrivals in the Belzec extermination camp await instructions The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) literally Devouring, or Samudaripen (Mass killing) is a term coined by the Roma (Gypsy) people to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of the Roma peoples of Europe during The Holocaust. ... This article is about the historical discipline; see Oral tradition for the oral transmission of historical information. ... Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer (born 1926) is an historian and scholar of the Holocaust. ... This article is about cultural prohibitions in general; for other uses, see Taboo (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Torture (disambiguation). ... Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event. ...

Donald Niewyk and Frances Nicosia write that the death toll was at least 130,000 of the nearly one million Roma and Sinti in Nazi-controlled Europe.^[219] Michael Berenbaum writes that serious scholarly estimates lie between 90,000 and 220,000.^[222] A detailed study by the late Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, calculated a death toll of at least 220,000, and possibly closer to 500,000.^[223][224] Martin Gilbert estimates a total of more than 220,000 of the 700,000 Romani in Europe.^[225] Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has argued in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.^[226] Hancock writes that, proportionately, the death toll equaled "and almost certainly exceed[ed], that of Jewish victims."^[227] Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE (born October 25, 1936 in London) is a British historian and the author of over seventy books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. ... Ian Hancock is a renowned Romani scholar. ...

Before being sent to the camps, the victims were herded into ghettos, including several hundred into the Warsaw Ghetto.^[87] Further east, teams of Einsatzgruppen tracked down Romani encampments and murdered the inhabitants on the spot, leaving no records of the victims. They were also targeted by the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Nazis, e.g. the Ustaše regime in Croatia, where a large number of Romani were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp. For other uses, see Ghetto (disambiguation). ... Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in Warsaw, former capital of Poland in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... An UstaÅ¡e guard pose among the bodies of prisoners murdered in the Jasenovac concentration camp The UstaÅ¡e (also known as Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian extreme nationalist movement. ... “Jasenovac” redirects here. ...

In May 1942, the Romani were placed under the same labor and social laws as the Jews. On December 16, 1942, Heinrich Himmler, Commander of the SS and regarded as the "architect" of the Nazi genocide,^[229] issued a decree that "Gypsy Mischlinge (mixed breeds), Romani, and members of the clans of Balkan origins who are not of German blood" should be sent to Auschwitz, unless they had served in the Wehrmacht.^[230] On January 29, 1943, another decree ordered the deportation of all German Romani to Auschwitz. SS redirects here. ... ... The straight-armed Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross, the emblem of the Wehrmacht. ...

This was adjusted on November 15, 1943, when Himmler ordered that, in the occupied Soviet areas, "sedentary Gypsies and part-Gypsies (Mischlinge) are to be treated as citizens of the country. Nomadic Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."^[231] Bauer argues that this adjustment reflected Nazi ideology that the Roma, originally an Aryan population, had been "spoiled" by non-Romani blood.^[232]

Disabled and mentally ill

"60,000 RM is what this person with genetic defects costs the community during his lifetime. Fellow German,^[233] that's your money too …"^[234]

Action T4 was a program established in 1939 to maintain the genetic purity of the German population by killing or sterilizing German and Austrian citizens who were judged to be disabled or suffering from mental disorder.^[236] For other uses, see Gene (disambiguation). ... Compulsory sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization. ... The term disability, as it is applied to humans, refers to any condition that impedes the completion of daily tasks using traditional methods. ... Mental disorder or mental illness are terms used to refer psychological pattern that occurs in an individual and is usually associated with distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture. ...

Between 1939 and 1941, 80,000 to 100,000 mentally ill adults in institutions were killed; 5,000 children in institutions; and 1,000 Jews in institutions.^[237] Outside the mental health institutions, the figures are estimated as 20,000 (according to Dr. Georg Renno, the deputy director of Schloss Hartheim, one of the euthanasia centers) or 400,000 (according to Frank Zeireis, the commandant of Mauthausen concentration camp).^[237] Another 300,000 were forcibly sterilized.^[238] Overall it has been estimated that over 200,000 individuals with mental disorders of all kinds were put to death, although their mass murder has received relatively little historical attention. Despite not being formally ordered to take part, psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions were at the center of justifying, planning and carrying out the atrocities at every stage, and "constituted the connection" to the later annihilation of Jews and other "undesirables" in the Holocaust.^[239] After strong protests by the German Catholic and Protestant churches on August 24, 1941 Hitler ordered the cancellation of the T4 program^[240] Schloss Hartheim was one of the Nazi Euthanasia killing centers where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. ... Mauthausen (from summer 1940, Mauthausen-Gusen) was a group of 49 Nazi concentration camps situated around the small town of Mauthausen in Upper Austria, about 20 kilometers east of the city of Linz. ... For other uses, see Psychiatrist (disambiguation). ...

The program was named after Tiergartenstraße 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, the headquarters of the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil und Anstaltspflege (General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care),^[241] led by Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler’s private chancellery (Kanzlei des Führer der NSDAP) and Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum on Tiergartenstaße: in the foreground, a plaque set into the pavement commemorates the victims of the T-4 euthanasia programme. ... Tiergarten (Animal Garden) is a large park and a former borough of Berlin, since 2001 a part of the expanded borough Mitte. ... Philipp Bouhler (born 11 September 1899 in Munich; died 19 May 1945 in Dachau (suicide)) was a Nazi German government official, head of the Führers Chancellery and leader of the euthanasia programme, the so-called Aktion T4. ... Brandt at the Doctors Trial Karl Brandt (January 8, 1904 – June 2, 1948) was the personal physician of Adolf Hitler and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia programme from 1939. ...

Brandt was tried in December 1946 at Nuremberg, along with 22 others, in a case known as United States of America vs. Karl Brandt et al., also known as the Doctors' Trial. He was hanged at Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948. For the 1947 Soviet film about the trials, see Nuremberg Trials (film). ... Karl Brandt at the Doctors Trial The Doctors Trial (officially United States of America v. ... This article is about death by hanging. ... Entrance of the Landsberg Prison Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about 30 miles (45 km) west of Munich. ...

Homosexuals

The Homomonument in Amsterdam, a memorial to the gay victims of Nazi Germany.

Between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexuals of German nationality are estimated to have been sent to concentration camps.^[184] James D. Steakley writes that what mattered in Germany was criminal intent or character, rather than criminal acts, and the "gesundes Volksempfinden" ("healthy sensibility of the people") became the leading normative legal principle.^[242] In 1936, Himmler created the "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion". Homosexuality was declared contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment,"^[184] and homosexuals were consequently regarded as "defilers of German blood." The Gestapo raided gay bars, tracked individuals using the address books of those they arrested, used the subscription lists of gay magazines to find others, and encouraged people to report suspected homosexual behavior and to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbours.^[184][242] The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. ... The pink triangle, a popular gay pride symbol, was originally used to denote homosexual men as a Nazi concentration camp badge. ... For Gay Bar, the song by Electric Six, see Electric Six. ...

Tens of thousands were convicted between 1933 and 1944 and sent to camps for "rehabilitation", where they were identified by yellow armbands^[243] and later pink triangles worn on the left side of the jacket and the right trouser leg, which singled them out for sexual abuse.^[242] Hundreds were castrated by court order.^[244] They were humiliated, tortured, used in hormone experiments conducted by SS doctors, and killed.^[184] Steakley writes that the full extent of gay suffering was slow to emerge after the war. Many victims kept their stories to themselves because homosexuality remained criminalized in postwar Germany. Around two percent of German homosexuals were persecuted by Nazis.^[242] Bad Touch redirects here. ... Castration (also referred as: gelding, neutering, orchiectomy, orchidectomy, and oophorectomy) is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testes or a female loses the functions of the ovaries. ... A court order is an official proclamation by a judge (or panel of judges) that defines the legal relationships between the parties before the court and requires or authorizes the carrying out of certain steps by one or more parties to a case. ... For other uses, see Hormone (disambiguation). ...

Freemasons

A memorial for Loge Liberté chérie, founded in November 1943 in Hut 6 of Emslandlager VII (KZ Esterwegen), one of two Masonic Lodges founded in a Nazi concentration camp.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that Freemasonry had "succumbed" to the Jews: "The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-preservation begun by Freemasonry is then transmitted to the masses of society by the Jewish press."^[245] Freemasons were sent to concentration camps as political prisoners, and forced to wear an inverted red triangle.^[246] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum believes “because many of the Freemasons who were arrested were also Jews and/or members of the political opposition, it is not known how many individuals were placed in Nazi concentration camps and/or were targeted only because they were Freemasons.”^[247] Nacht und Nebel (German for Night and Fog) was a directive (German: ) of Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, resulting in kidnapping and disappearance of many political activists throughout Nazi Germanys occupied territories. ... Mein Kampf (English: My Struggle/My Battle) is a book by the Austrian-born leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. ... Freemasons redirects here. ... Pacifist may mean: an advocate of pacifism. ... A chart, circa 1938 - 1942, of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. ...

Jehovah's Witnesses

Refusing to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party or to serve in the military, roughly 12,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were forced to wear a purple triangle and placed in camps, where they were given the option of renouncing their faith and submitting to the state's authority. Between 2,500 and 5,000 were killed.^[185] Historian Detlef Garbe, director at the Neuengamme (Hamburg) Memorial, writes that "no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness."^[248]

Political activists

German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism^[249] and were also among the first to be sent to concentration camps. Hitler claimed that communism was a Jewish ideology which the Nazis termed "Judeo-Bolshevism". Fear of communist agitation was used as justification for the Enabling Act of 1933, the law which gave Hitler his original dictatorial powers. Herman Göring later testified at the Nuremberg Trials that the Nazis' willingness to repress German communists prompted President Paul von Hindenburg and the German elite to cooperate with the Nazis. The first concentration camp was built at Dachau, in March 1933, to imprison German communists, socialists, trade unionists and others opposed to the Nazis.^[250] Communists, social democrats and other political prisoners were forced to wear a red triangle. This article is about the form of society and political movement. ... Socialism is a social and economic system (or the political philosophy advocating such a system) in which the economic means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the people. ... The Lawrence textile strike (1912), with soldiers surrounding peaceful demonstrators A trade union or labor union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas such as wages, hours, and working conditions, forming a cartel of labour. ... The following is a list of pejorative political epithets; meaning, words or phrases used to mock or insult certain political views and their supporters. ... The Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz in German) was passed by Germanys parliament (the Reichstag) on March 23, 1933. ... A dictator is an authoritarian, often totalitarian ruler (e. ... Hermann Göring. ... For the 1947 Soviet film about the trials, see Nuremberg Trials (film). ... Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, known universally as Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal and statesman. ... A political prisoner is someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image are deemed by a government to either challenge or threaten the authority of the state. ... A chart, circa 1938 - 1942, of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. ...

Hitler and the Nazis also hated German leftists because of their resistance to the party's racism. Many leaders of German leftist groups were Jews, and Jews were especially prominent among the leaders of the Spartacist Uprising in 1919. Hitler already referred to Marxism and "Bolshevism" as a means of "the international Jew" to undermine "racial purity" and survival of the Nordics or Aryans, as well to stir up socioeconomic class tension and labor unions against the government or state-owned businesses. Within the concentration camps such as Buchenwald, German communists were privileged in comparison to Jews because of their "racial purity."^[251] In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... The Spartacist uprising, also known as the January uprising, was a general strike (and the armed battles accompanying it) in Germany from January 5 to January 12, 1919. ... Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ... Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... Nordic theory (or Nordicism) was a theory of racial supremacy prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which claimed that North European peoples constitute a “master race” because of their supposed innate racial capacity for leadership. ... Socioeconomics is the study of the social and economic impacts of any product or service offering, market intervention or other activity on an economy as a whole and on the companies, organization and individuals who are its main economic actors. ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ... A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... Buchenwald is the German for beech forest. A koolio forest in the hill range Elm (Höhenzug Elm), in the Helmstedt and Wolfenbüttel districts, Lower Saxony A German name for a Hungarian region Bakony Forest (Hungarian: , German: ) A Nazi concentration camp in Germany (German: ); See Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald...

Whenever the Nazis occupied a new territory, members of communist, socialist, or anarchist groups were normally to be the first persons detained or executed. Evidence of this is found in Hitler's infamous Commissar Order, in which he ordered the summary execution of all political commissars captured among Soviet soldiers, as well as the execution of all Communist Party members in German held territory.^[252][253] Einsatzgruppen carried out these executions in the east.^[254] Theory and practice Issues History Culture Economics By region Lists Related Anarchism Portal Philosophy Portal Politics Portal        Anarchism (from Greek ἀν (without) + ἄρχειν (to rule) + ισμός (from stem -ιζειν), without archons, without rulers)[1] is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which support the elimination of all compulsory government[2][3][4][5... The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was a written order given by Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa. ... Russian political officer during winter war Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title (комисса́р) used in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and in the Soviet Union, as well as some other Communist countries. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ...

Nacht und Nebel (German for "Night and Fog") was a directive (German: Erlass) of Hitler on December 7, 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, resulting in kidnapping and disappearance of many political activists throughout Nazi Germany's occupied territories. Nacht und Nebel (German for Night and Fog) was a directive (German: ) of Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, resulting in kidnapping and disappearance of many political activists throughout Nazi Germanys occupied territories. ... Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (September 22, 1882–October 16, 1946) was a German field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) and a senior military leader during World War II. // Keitel was born in Helmscherode, Brunswick, German Empire, the son of Carl Keitel, a middle-class landowner, and his wife Apollonia Vissering. ... Disappear redirects here. ...

See also

Involvement of other countries and nationals

• General: Évian Conference, Bermuda Conference, International response to the Holocaust, Voyage of the Damned, Struma.
• Collaborators: The response of individual states.
• Rescuers: Ángel Sanz Briz, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Ho Feng Shan, Chiune Sugihara, Folke Bernadotte, Jorge Pelasca, List of people who assisted Jews during the Holocaust, List of Righteous Among the Nations by country, Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, Hugh O'Flaherty, Raoul Wallenberg, Rescue of the Danish Jews, Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust, Resistance during the Holocaust, Righteous Among the Nations, Witold Pilecki, Oskar Schindler, Irena Sendler, Jan Karski, Henryk Slawik, Żegota, Związek Organizacji Wojskowej.

Aftermath and historiography

• General discussion: Aftermath of the Holocaust, Aftermath of World War II, Denazification.
• Legal response: Command responsibility, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Doctors' Trial, German war crimes, Nuremberg Trials, Trial of Adolf Eichmann, War crimes of the Wehrmacht.
• Victims: List of victims of Nazism.
• Survivors: List of famous Holocaust survivors, Sh'erit ha-Pletah, Wiedergutmachung.
• Memorials: Holocaust memorials, Yom HaShoah, Yad Vashem.
• Cultural, political, and scholarly responses: Holocaust denial, Criticism of Holocaust denial, Holocaust theology, The Holocaust in art and literature.
• For the issue of where responsibility for the Holocaust lies: The Holocaust (responsibility), Command responsibility, and for an account of the historiographical positions: Functionalism versus intentionalism and Historikerstreit.
• For further resources: Holocaust (resources).

Miscellaneous

• Animal rights and the Holocaust, Antiziganism, Aryanization, Bereavement in Judaism, Friedrich Kellner, Ilse Koch, International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, Irma Grese, List of composers influenced by the Holocaust, Jews outside Europe under Nazi occupation, Anti-Semitism, Is the Holocaust Unique? (book)

Related links

• Armenian genocide
• Bosnian genocide
• Darfur genocide
• Genocide
• Holodomor
• Maafa
• Rwandan genocide

References

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Holocaust

• External links, references, and other resources are listed at Holocaust (resources).

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