Holocaust

The Holocaust(Jews)

The Holocaust was the persecution and murder of about six million Jews by the Nazis. Holocaust is a word that means "sacrifice by fire". The Nazis came to power around January 1933 and believed that Germans were racially superior to Jews.

History

* The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.

* The term Holocaust refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people.

* In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered.

* The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people.

* Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as concentration camps, there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner of war camps, and transit camps

History

* From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners and people the Nazis labeled as "asocial."

* After Kristallnacht in 1938, the persecution of Jews became more organized. This led to the increase in the number of Jews sent to concentration camps.

* Life inside Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and given tiny amounts to eat. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk. Torture inside the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent.

History

* At many of the Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will.

* While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination camps were built for the purpose of killing large groups of people quickly and efficiently.

* Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. About 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz

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