The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. The Nazis believed Germans were racially superior and Jews were an inferior threat to the German racial community. They began by stripping Jews of citizenship and livelihoods before deporting them to overcrowded ghettos and concentration camps where appalling conditions killed thousands through disease, starvation, brutal treatment and exposure. The Holocaust occurred throughout German-occupied Europe, with Jews murdered in mass shootings and gas chambers. It was driven by Nazi racial antisemitism and conspiracy theories blaming Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.

1. The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic,
bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution
and murder of approximately six million
Jews by the Nazi regime and its
collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of
Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The
Nazis, who came to power in Germany in
January 1933, believed that Germans were
"racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed
"inferior," were an alien threat to the so-
called German racial community.

2. What was the
Holocaust ?
• The Holocaust was the systematic attempt to
exterminate the Jewish people. Shortly after Adolf Hitler
took over power in Germany in 1933 he began to
implement eliminationist measures deigned to
disenfranchise German Jews from economic and social
positions. In 1935 the Nazis passed laws which stripped
Jews of their German citizenship and took away their
livelihood. Life for Jews became increasingly worse until
the onset of WWII in 1939, when the Germans began to
take away their lives. From that point onwards the
Germans began deporting Jews to overcrowded
• ghettos and concentration camps. Appalling conditions,
disease, brutal treatment, exposure to the elements,
forced starvation and labor killed thousands.

3. Who was
involved ?
• Important people from the Axis Power
• Adolf Hitler- the dictator, then later on sole leader of Germany
• Joseph Goebbels- propaganda minister for the Nazis, close follower of Hitler
• Heinrich Himmler -controller of the SS, second in command of the Nazis
• Benito Mussolini- prime minister of Italy, close ally of Hitler
•
Important people from the Allies
•
• Franklin Roosevelt- president of the United States
• Winston Churchill- prime minister of the United Kingdom
• Joesph Stalin- the leader and dictator of the Soviet Union

4. When did it
happen ?
• The "Holocaust" refers to the period from
January 30, 1933, when Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (V-E
Day), the end of the war in Europe.

5. Where did it
happen ?
• The Holocaust took place mainly in Europe.
Citizens - mainly Jews - of western European
countries were deported to extermination
camps, especially Auschwitz, where they were
murdered with poison gas. Citizens of Poland,
Russia, Hungary and several other central and
eastern European countries were murdered by
mobile shooting squads and by poison gas in
extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Belzec,
Treblinka and Sobibor.

6. How did it
happen ?
• In purely organizational terms the victims were killed by:
• Being forced into ghettos without sufficient food.
• They were sent to concentration camps, where they were
worked to death.
• The Nazi mobile killing units (SD-Einsatzgruppen) killed many
in mass, open air shootings.
• Gassing at extermination centres.
•
Hitler was the driving force behind the obsessive and fanatical
Nazi persecution and ultimately also the mass slaughter of the
Jews and various other groups, though the details of
implementation were left to the terror apparatus, headed by
Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.

7. Why did it happen ?
The Jews had previously been subject to all kinds of
earlier "religious" prejudices. From the 1870s
onwards a new, racial antisemitism was added to
this.
There was widespread demonization of the Jews.
• According to the first part of Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler,
1889-1939 Hubris, Penguin Books 1998 Hitler was a "lazy leader"
who did not like to bother himself much with formulating day-to-day
policy ... As a result, his subordinates at various levels tried to guess
what he wanted. This encouraged rapidly growing extremism. The
terror apparatus, headed by Himmler and Heydrich, became a very
powerful lobby.
• There were all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories about the Jews
as the 'biological root' of Communism. The Nazis kept on saying,
without any evidence, that 'the Jews' were enemies of Germany and
so on. In fact, most German Jews were very pro-German indeed
and had fought well for Germany in World War 1. Many were
tragically in love with Germany, and some were reluctant to leave
the country even if they were able to do so. However, fear of
Communism was a powerful force in many parts of Central and
Southern Europe in the interwar period, and was ruthlessly exploited
by many politicians.
• The Holocaust happened because Hitler wanted to purify Germany

8. Further input on
the “Why”
question.
• Further input:
Many Germans blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, some even
claiming that German Jews had betrayed the nation during the war. In addition, at the
end of the war a Communist group attempted to carry out a Bolshevik-type revolution
in the German state of Bavaria. Most of the leaders of that failed attempt were Jews.
As a result, some Germans associated Jews with Bolsheviks and regarded both
groups as dangerous enemies of Germany. After the war, a republic, later known as
the Weimar Republic, was set up in Germany. Jewish politicians and intellectuals
played an important role in German life during the Weimar Republic, and many non-
Jews resented their influence.
On the basis of his antisemitic views, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler attacked the impressive
role Jews played in German society during the Weimar Republic, especially in the
intellectual world and in left-wing politics. He referred to them as a plague and a
cancer. In his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle, translated 1939), which was published
in 1926, Hitler blamed the plight of Germany at the end of World War I on an
international Jewish conspiracy and used terms such as extirpation and extermination
in relation to the Jews. He claimed that the Jews had achieved economic dominance
and the ability to control and manipulate the mass media to their own advantage. He
wrote of the need to eradicate their powerful economic position, if necessary by
means of their physical removal.