The Holocaust
Learn about the Holocaust — the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Holocaust (1941–1945) was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its collaborators. In total, the Nazis murdered some 17 million people, including Roma, disabled people, political opponents, homosexuals, Slavic civilians, and Soviet prisoners of war.
The Holocaust evolved through distinct phases. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of citizenship. Kristallnacht (1938) escalated to organized violence and property destruction. After the invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) shot over 1.5 million Jews in mass executions. The Wannsee Conference (January 1942) coordinated the 'Final Solution' — the systematic deportation of Europe's Jews to death camps equipped with gas chambers and crematoria.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, and Majdanek became factories of death where industrialized murder was carried out with bureaucratic efficiency. The Holocaust was not a spontaneous eruption of violence but a carefully planned genocide implemented by a modern state using modern technology and organization. Its legacy — the recognition that a civilized nation could descend into systematic evil — transformed international law, human rights discourse, and the moral consciousness of the world.