The Holocaust
The word "holokauston" originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. It is used to describe a slaughter, especially the destruction of masses of human beings. The Hebrew translation is "Sho'ah", which appeared for the first time in Jerusalem in 1940 and has been used since the 1950's to describe the destruction of European Jewry. The mass extermination of Jews has become the archetype of genocide.
WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?
The Holocaust was the attempted destruction of everyJewish man, woman and child in Europe during WorldWar ll. It was one of the major policies of the Nazi government of Germany and was called “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question”.The techniques used for implementing this policy were varied. One was to put Jews into concentration camps,to be used as slave labour, until they died from sheer exhaustion, starvation or disease. Another was the use of a special forces called Einsatzgruppen- mobilekilling units - introduced after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. When these units entered newly occupied districts, they would segregate the Jewish population and shoot them, often thousands at a time. A third was the building of death camps, whose purpose was mass killing. Jews from all over Europe would be transported by train to the camps, where those healthy enough would be selected for work. The young, elderly and the frail were sent to large gas chambers, where they were poisoned, often within hours of their arrival.The Nazis operated 6 death camps, all located in eastern Poland and they were responsible for the murder of more than 3.5 million Jews. By the end of the war, an estimated 6 million Jews had perished, including 1.5 million children.
Follow this link for a comprehensive Timeline of the events of the leading to and during the Holocaust 1933-1945 The Holocaust
THe sport of cutting Jewish beards in public
Children of the Holocaust
Deliberate and systematic killing of children was unprecedented in human history. Very few escaped the Nazi plan of Jewish annihilation. Those who were sent to concentration camps were killed upon arrival. Only an occasional, healthy-looking teenager managed to slip through the system.
Chronology of events leading up to and including World War II
Emigration from Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II.
After the first World War, Jews were amongst the millions who emigrated from Europe. In the mid 1920's however, many Western countries started restricting Jewish immigration. With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, many Jews viewed emigration as the only possible escape. With the aid of Jewish organizations, thousands succeeded in emigrating from Germany. However, Germany banned further Jewish emigration from 1941
The Genocide of over 6 million Jews were systematically annihilation during WWII.
Click here to view map of death tolls in Europe:map #2.pdf new
