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right Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust
The Holocaust refers to Nazi Germany's systematic genocide of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II starting in 1941 through to 1945.
The Jewish people of Europe were the main targets of the Holocaust, in what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Other groups deemed "undesirable" were also persecuted and murdered. The death toll is estimated at between 10 and 20 million people.
The word Holocaust comes from the Greek word holokauston ( Greek for "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering"), the word meant "a burnt sacrifice offered to God", referring to a sacrifice Jews were required to make by the Torah, and later to large scale catastrophes or massacres. Shoa (השואה), also spelled Shoah and Sho'ah, Hebrew for "Calamity", is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust; Churban Europa Hebrew for "European Destruction" (as opposed to simply Churban, the destruction of the Second Temple), is also used. Shoa is preferred by many Jews and a growing number of Christians due to theological discomfort with the literal meaning of the word Holocaust. These groups believe it is theologically offensive to imply that the European Jews were a sacrifice to God. Many Roma (Gypsy) people use the word Porajmos, meaning "Devouring".
There is a set of features unique to the Nazi Holocaust that distinguishes it from other mass murders:
1. It was a deliberate, systematic attempt to wipe out an entire race of people. It is estimated that die Endlösung der Judenfrage (the Final Solution of the Jewish Question), as the Nazis called it during the Wannsee conferenceThe Wannsee conference was the discussion by a group of Nazi officials about the "final solution of the Jewish question" Endlosung der Judenfrage . It took place on January 20, 1942 in the Wannsee Villa overlooking the Wannsee lake in southwestern Berlin of January 1942, saw the murder of 60 per cent of all the Jews in Europe, and 35 per cent of the world's Jewish population. In a speech in October 1943, Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler ( October 7, 1900 May 23, 1945) was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. As Reichsfuhrer-SS, he led the Schutzstaffel and Gestapo and was put in charge of organizing the mass extermination of Jews and others in extermination camp, the Reichsführer of the SchutzstaffelFor other uses of the abbreviation SS see SS (disambiguation The Schutzstaffel or SS was a large paramilitary organization that belonged to the Nazi party. The Nazis regarded the SS as an elite unit, based on the Praetorian Guard, and selected on racial a ( SS), told a group of senior SS men and Nazi party leaders: "What about the women and children? I decided to find an absolutely clear solution here too. I regard myself as having no right to exterminate (ausrotten) the men-- in other words, to kill them or have them killed -- and to let the avengers in the form of the children grow up for our sons and grandsons to deal with. The difficult decision had to be taken to make these people disappear from the earth."
2. The efficient and systematic method by which the mass killings were conducted. Detailed lists of potential victims were made and maintained using DehomagDehomag was a German business, effectively a franchisee of International Business Machines. The word was an acronym for Deutsche Hollerith Maschinenwerk Aktiengeschellschaft "German Hollerith Machine Works Company. Hollerith" refers to the technology of p statistical machinery, and meticulous records of the killings have been found. As prisoners entered the death camps, they had to surrender all personal property to the Nazis - which was precisely catalogued and tagged, and for which receipts were issued. In addition, considerable effort was expended over the course of the Holocaust to find increasingly efficient means of killing more people; for example, by switching from carbon monoxide poisoning in the Aktion Reinhard death camps of Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to the use of Zyklon B at Majdanek and Auschwitz.
3. The international and widespread scale. Unlike mass killings carried out in a specific area or country, the Holocaust was methodically executed in virtually every inch of Nazi-occupied territory, with Jews and other victims targeted in what are now 35 separate European nations, being sent to labor camps in some nations, and extermination camps in others. The murders continued until the end of World War II, the Holocaust ending only when the Allies charged into Germany itself, forcing the Nazis to surrender in May 1945.
4. Nazis carried out cruel and deadly medical experiments on prisoners, including children. Dr. Josef Mengele, medical officer at Auschwitz and chief medical officer at Birkenau, was known as the "Angel of Death" for his sadistic and bizarre medical experiments.
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