The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was a genocide in which, under the rule of Adolf Hitler and his collaborates, approximately six million Jewish people were killed by Germany’s Nazi Regime from 1941-1945.
Though the anti-semitism of Nazi Germany began in 1933 because of Hitler’s belief that the Jewish people were “inferior” to the “superior German race”, the mass murders we all associate with the Holocaust did not begin until World War II had started.
In the beginning the concentration camps that would serve as the homes and final resting places of over six million people- who ranged from homosexuals to gypsies to the disabled to, most famously, the Jewish- were filled with Hitler’s political opponents, the Communists and the Social …show more content…
The steps towards the “Final Solution” began with the transportation of Jews (as well as European Gypsies) to Polish Ghettos, starting in 1941. It didn’t stop there. Beginning in June of 1941, every Jewish person in a German-occupied area was forced to wear a yellow star, marking them as Jewish and as an open target for anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The mass murder of the Jewish people began with the June 22, 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, approximately 80% of the Jewish people in Lithuania had been murdered and, in addition, the Germans, with the help of the Romanians, caused the mass murder of about 150,000 Ukrainian and Romanian Jews in the first few months following the invasion.
This was only the beginning of the horrors that the Jewish people would face until the end of World War II because, starting in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports of the Jewish people from the ghettoes to the concentration camps. These mass deportations started with the people deemed to be the least useful in the ghettoes: the old, the sick, the weak, and the very
Though the anti-semitism of Nazi Germany began in 1933 because of Hitler’s belief that the Jewish people were “inferior” to the “superior German race”, the mass murders we all associate with the Holocaust did not begin until World War II had started.
In the beginning the concentration camps that would serve as the homes and final resting places of over six million people- who ranged from homosexuals to gypsies to the disabled to, most famously, the Jewish- were filled with Hitler’s political opponents, the Communists and the Social …show more content…
The steps towards the “Final Solution” began with the transportation of Jews (as well as European Gypsies) to Polish Ghettos, starting in 1941. It didn’t stop there. Beginning in June of 1941, every Jewish person in a German-occupied area was forced to wear a yellow star, marking them as Jewish and as an open target for anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The mass murder of the Jewish people began with the June 22, 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, approximately 80% of the Jewish people in Lithuania had been murdered and, in addition, the Germans, with the help of the Romanians, caused the mass murder of about 150,000 Ukrainian and Romanian Jews in the first few months following the invasion.
This was only the beginning of the horrors that the Jewish people would face until the end of World War II because, starting in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports of the Jewish people from the ghettoes to the concentration camps. These mass deportations started with the people deemed to be the least useful in the ghettoes: the old, the sick, the weak, and the very