Photos of the Holocaust

Photos of the Holocaust are plentiful. It isn't known how many of them were reproduced so massively or why they exist in such large numbers, but they are out there. These images are often disturbing, featuring concentration camps, mass graves, and other terrible things that are difficult to look at. However, they do offer a firsthand look at the sheer horror of the Holocaust, which is one of the largest cases of genocide in history. The Holocaust took place from 1933 to 1945, and involved the systematic murder of more than 11 million people in total, including 6 million Jews and around 1.5 million children.
 
Hitler and the Nazis believed that Jews were the problem for Germany, the element that was keeping it from becoming a world power. They also discriminated against many other people who they believed to be 'inferior' or 'useless' to their goals. Children were especially vulnerable because if they weren't old enough to work, they were often killed simply because they were 'useless eaters'. Families lost everything, including each other, during this event. Some of the saddest photos of the Holocaust that exist are the ones depicting sad, starving, or otherwise troubled Jewish families in concentration camps and ghettos.
 
Of course, pictures of the crematoriums, mass graves, and mass murders that were taking place are equally shocking and disturbing. These photos were often taken by Nazi leaders themselves or by photographers hired to document their work. The Nazis overtook Poland, Austria, the Soviet Union, and other regions of Eastern Europe, rounding up the Jews and other inferiors and shipping them off to concentration camps to be tortured, used for medical experimentation, put into forced labor, or killed. In addition to the mass murders, millions died of starvation, exposure, disease, and neglect at the hands of the Nazis, bringing the total death toll to a startling number.
 
Of course, the exact number of deaths that occurred during the Holocaust has never been accurately captured. Historians can only speculate and approximate on how many people died during this time in history, and the average numbers often have a wide range. Nevertheless, there are thousands of photographs of the killing fields, the concentration camps, and the torture of Jews and others deemed inferior that have been found over the years and are accessible to the public. A simple internet search will reveal hundreds of photographs of the Holocaust, including various perspectives on the event.