The Holocaust
The Holocaust is the name for the genocide of millions of people during World War II while Adolf Hitler was in power and controlling the Third Reich in Germany. The systematic murder was spawned by Nazism and its ideologies that a racial purity was needed in Europe. Two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe was killed in the Holocaust either deliberately or through indirect causes, along with about 5 million others such as gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, non-supporters, the disabled, the elderly and 'useless' children.
More than 1.1 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust, along with 2 million women and about 3 million men. Anyone who didn't fit Hitler's New Order was subject to being targeted and murdered by the Third Reich and the S.S. Men who were responsible for carrying out the unspoken orders of their Nazi leader. Counting all of the genocide that occurred during the Holocaust era, there were between 11 and 17 million killed in total.
The Holocaust had humble beginnings, starting with laws that banned Jewish business, the presence of Jews in public society, and admonished their beliefs, requiring them to wear a Star of David for easy identification. However, by the dawn of the 1940s, the Jews and other groups being targeted were being attacked, killed, forced to live in ghettos, taken to camps, and forced into slave labor. The camps are commonly referred to as concentration camps, but that was only one kind. There were also extermination camps, labor camps, and transit camps, among others. Those who went to extermination or concentration camps were generally killed upon arrival or tortured before being killed.
Work camps were designed to starve and work the prisoners to death, but this was not enough for the Third Reich. They also built death camps, which were designed specifically to allow for mass murder that was quick and efficient. This included mass shootings, gas chambers, and other means of killing. Auschwitz is among the largest and most well-known of the death camps, with an estimated 1.1 million killed at this camp alone.
Today, many anti-Semitists are attempting to deny that the Holocaust even happened. They are refuting the factual history of this decade of genocide, which is causing advocates, historians, and groups like the U.S. Holocaust Museum to speak up and speak out. This event was the largest genocide in the 20th century and among one of the most notable events in world history to date.