Definition and Scope of the Holocaust

Summary

The Holocaust, also called the Shoah, was the systematic genocide of European Jews carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945 during World War II. Approximately six million Jews—about two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population—were murdered through mass shootings, starvation, forced labor, deportations, death marches, and poison gas, especially in extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chełmno, and Majdanek. The term Holocaust primarily refers to the destruction of European Jewry, although it is sometimes used more broadly to include the Nazi persecution and murder of other groups, including Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, people with disabilities, and others. The Hebrew term Shoah refers specifically to the Jewish victims. Nazi persecution developed from racist and antisemitic ideology and escalated from discriminatory laws, forced emigration, and violence to ghettos and the Final Solution: the planned murder of all Jews under Nazi control.

Key Points

• 1

  The Holocaust was the Nazi-led genocide of European Jews from 1941 to 1945, resulting in approximately six million Jewish deaths.

• 2

  Its methods included mass shootings, ghettos, forced labor, starvation, deportation, death marches, and extermination through poison gas.

• 3

  The Holocaust primarily refers to the genocide of Jews, while broader usage may include Nazi crimes against Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, civilians, people with disabilities, and other persecuted groups.

• 4

  Nazi anti-Jewish policy escalated from legal discrimination and forced emigration to systematic mass murder known as the Final Solution.

• 5

  The Hebrew term Shoah means catastrophic destruction and specifically denotes the genocide of European Jews.