The
Holocaust
was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews by Adolf
Hitler and the Nazis during World War 2. In 1933 approximately
nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would
be military occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of
every three European Jews had been killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. 1.5
million children
were murdered. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish
children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of
handicapped children.
In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of handicapped
Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas. After the German
invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units
following in the wake of the German Army began shooting massive
numbers of Jews and Gypsies in open fields and ravines on the
outskirts of conquered cities and towns.
Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and organized method
of killing. Six extermination centers were established in occupied
Poland where large-scale murder by gas and body disposal through
cremation were conducted systematically. Victims were deported to
these centers from Western Europe and from the ghettos in Eastern
Europe which the Nazis had established. In addition, millions died
in the ghettos and concentration camps as a result of forced labor,
starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, and execution.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust 2
Nazi Posters
Adolf Hitler