Description: DESCRIPTION : Here for sale is an original vintage , Published 1943 ULTRA RARE illustrated KKL - JNF STAMP FOLDER which was published and issued by the JNF - KKL in Jerusalem Israel in 1943 in the midst of the HOLOCAUST . Decdicated to the Holocaust Remembrance , The KKL - JNF issued in 1943 this serie of TWENTY "Exile Stamps" series, which JKL published in 1943. These stamps show the life of the Jews in exile, and describe the Jewish communities, which were destroyed during World War II. The stamps were designed according to the works of Jewish artists from the beginning of the century 20 and depict the exile and the image of the Jew in exile. The series also features stamps of places where Jewish communities lived. The title that accompanied the special series of stamps was "We will not forget you the exile!" . Depicted are quite a few LEGENDARY SYNAGOGUES as well as ART PIECES related to the DIASPORA , Created by LILIEN , STRUCK , STEINHARDT , BUDKO and Hirszenberg . Synagogues and streets of BRODI , BUDAPEST , BRODY , LUBLIN, WARSAW , PRAGUE , KRAKOV , KOVNA , PRANKFURT , TUNISIA and others. TWENTY beautifuly illustrated and designed STAPMS in various colors. Thrilling Hebrew text explaining the essence of the DIASPORA and HOLOCAUST as are presented the these 20 STAMPS. Each stamp is around 1.5" x 1" . The stamps are pasted as issued in a SPECIAL FOLDER. The folder is 7"x 4" once folded. Twice as wide while opened. EXTREMELY RARE with all the ORIGINAL STAMPS. Very good condition. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) . Will be sent in a protective rigid sealed packaging.PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards.. SHIPPMENT : Shipp worldwide via registered airmail is $ 29 .Will be sent in a protective rigid sealed packaging. Handling around 5-10 days after payment. The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups. The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews regardless of means to attempt to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. Terminology and scope Main article: Names of the Holocaust The term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning "burnt offering",[1] has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.[a] The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted,[b] especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians.[2][3][4] All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.[5] By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.[6] The Hebrew word Shoah ("catastrophic destruction") exclusively refers to Jewish victims.[7][8][2] The perpetrators used the phrase "Final Solution" as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews.[9] Background A postcard of a river with buildings behind it View of the Pegnitz River (c. 1900) with the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg, destroyed in 1938 during the November pogroms Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years.[10] Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus.[11][12] In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate.[13] By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns, spoke Yiddish, and practiced Orthodox Judaism.[14] Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews.[15][16] Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them.[17] Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe.[18][19] The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa.[20][21] World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries.[22] Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms.[23] Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory;[22] opposition to the postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum.[24][25] The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.[24][26] see caption 1919 Austrian postcard showing a Jew stabbing a German Army soldier in the back The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war,[27] and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust.[28] From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews, whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity".[5] The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders[29] and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements.[24][30] The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization.[31][32] These ideas appealed to many Germans.[33] The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the Soviet threat.[34] Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union, as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany.[35][36][37] Rise of Nazi Germany see caption Territorial expansion of Germany from 1933 to 1941 Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation, the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections,[38][39] by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery.[40][41] Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians.[38] Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media,[42] tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up.[43] The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps.[44] The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.[45][46][47] Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life,[48] Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime.[49][50] The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament.[42] The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support.[51] Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews[42] and other groups targeted by the Nazis.[46] Persecution of Jews Main article: The Holocaust in Germany Further information: Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe.[52][53][54] Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws.[55] In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service.[51] After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.[56] The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.[57][58] Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge, with varying rights.[59] The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country.[56] Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business.[60] In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.[58] A building that has been ransacked with debris strewn around View of the old synagogue in Aachen after its destruction during Kristallnacht Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939.[61] Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized.[62] As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close.[63] Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany.[64] On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed,[65] at least 90 Jews were murdered,[66] and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested,[67][68] although many were released within weeks.[69] German Jews were levied a special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM).[70][c] The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany.[73] By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa.[74] The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai, Mandatory Palestine, and South Africa.[75] Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM,[c] mostly from Jews.[76] The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.[77] Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule.[34] Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s.[78] In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad.[79][80] Start of World War II A large crowd of people with swastika banners Danzigers rallying for Hitler, shortly after the free city's annexation into Germany The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from the United Kingdom and France.[81] During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders;[82] there was also a great deal of looting.[83] Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance.[84] Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed.[85][86] The Auschwitz concentration camp was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges.[87] Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.[88] The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact.[89] The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war.[90][91] Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy.[92] In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Denmark and Norway.[81] In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.[81] Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule.[82] The war provided cover for "Aktion T4", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas.[88][93][94] The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews.[95] Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941.[96][97][98] Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war.[97][99] Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.[100][101] Ghettoization and resettlement Further information: The Holocaust in Poland People and buildings with an unpaved street Unpaved street in the Frysztak Ghetto, Krakow District People walking on a paved surface around a still body A body lying in the street of the Warsaw Ghetto in the General Governorate Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland.[54][102] The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths.[103] Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank, the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews.[104][105] After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar, but this proved impossible.[106][107] The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews.[106][105] In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941.[108] During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone.[109] Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor.[110] In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands.[111] Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.[110] The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators.[112][113] The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź, were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence.[114] Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it.[115] Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued.[116] A Jewish community leadership (Judenrat) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve.[117][118] Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.[119][120][121] Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe was common.[122] Invasion of the Soviet Union Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.[123][105] Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons,[124] what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism[125] was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war.[126][127] A quick victory was expected[128] and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers.[129] To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.[130][131] The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas.[132][133][134] Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped,[135] the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad, as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.[136][137] By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in the ghettos.[138] Public execution of Masha Bruskina, a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation,[139][140] making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews.[141][142] Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed.[143][144] About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare, including more than 300,000 in Belarus.[145][146] From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants.[147] During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot.[148] By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus.[149][150] Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported.[148][151] Although most of those killed were not Jews,[146][149] anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.[152] Mass shootings of Jews Further information: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and The Holocaust in Romania Half naked woman running, and a man carrying a bat At least 3,000 Jews were killed during the 1941 Lviv pogroms, mainly by local Ukrainians.[153] The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941.[154] During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews.[155][117] Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands.[156][157] Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.[158][159] Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942.[160][161] Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees.[162] The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews.[163][164] The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted.[165] The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews.[160] In July and August Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews.[166] At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too.[166][167] Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus.[168] Men rounded up and walking Original Nazi propaganda caption: "Too bad even for a bullet... The Jews shown here were shot at once." 28 June 1941 in Rozhanka, Belarus Men execute at least four Soviet civilians kneeling by the side of a mass grave Shooting from behind became popular because killers did not have to look at their victims' faces and the dead were likely to fall into the grave.[169] The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits.[170] The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet.[171] In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards.[170] Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants.[172] Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Białystok, and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.[117] Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere.[173] Besides Germany, Romania killed the largest number of Jews.[174][175] Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943.[176] Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000.[177] Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine.[178][179] At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration.[180][181] Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk.[182][183] In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews.[173][184] Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.[185] After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them.[166] In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews.[170][186][187] By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive.[188] By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot[189] and as many as 225,000 Roma.[190] The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.[191] Systematic deportations across Europe Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe,[192] but there is disagreement when.[193][194] Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941.[193][195] Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later.[193] On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.[196][197] The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his 1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."[197][198] It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.[197] Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy.[199] The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.[200][201] Extermination camps Main article: Extermination camp Deportation to Chełmno Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust.[202] The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans.[203][204][205] In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik[206] began work planning Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on the previous Aktion T4 programme[207][208]—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate.[209][203] In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered.[210][211] In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps[212] after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941.[213][208] The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice.[206] The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby.[214] Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars. As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar. Many died en route, partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports.[215][216] Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations.[217] Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber.[218] Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes.[219][197] The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning.[220] At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor,[221] although many of these prisoners died later on[222] through starvation, mass shooting, torture,[223] and medical experiments.[224] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs.[225][226] Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards.[227][216] About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas.[228] Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps.[229] Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.[230][231] Major extermination camps[232] CampLocationNumber of Jews killedKilling technologyPlanning beganMass gassing duration ChełmnoWartheland[232]150,000[232]Gas vans[232]July 1941[232]8 December 1941 – April 1943 and April–July 1944[233] BelzecLublin District[232]440,823–596,200[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]October 1941[233]17 March 1942 – December 1942[233] SobiborLublin District[232]170,618–238,900[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]Late 1941 or March 1942[235]May 1942 – October 1942[235] TreblinkaWarsaw District[232]780,863–951,800[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]April 1942[232]23 July 1942 – October 1943[232] Auschwitz II–BirkenauEast Upper Silesia[232]900,000–1,000,000[232]Stationary gas chamber, hydrogen cyanide[232]September 1941 (built as POW camp)[212][232]February 1942 – October 1944[232] Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland Further information: Operation Reinhard See caption Cumulative murders of Jews from the General Governorate at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943 Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market.[236] In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere.[237][238] By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor;[236] for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared.[239] The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps.[240][238] During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.[241] In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.[242] Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action.[243] In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later.[244] Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.[242] A young boy surrounded by other unarmed civilians holds his hands over his head while a man in uniform points a submachine gun in his direction The Warsaw Ghetto uprising became significant as a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis.[244] The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late.[245] During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka.[246][247] At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz.[248] 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia, Podolia, and southwestern Belarus.[249][250] Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews.[251] Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire.[252] These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain.[253] In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw, Białystok, and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons.[254] The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the Wola Massacre, or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing.[255] Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.[256] Deportations from elsewhere A column of people marching with luggage Jews are deported from Würzburg, Germany to the Lublin District of the General Governorate, 25 April 1942. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.[201] Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees.[257] If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps.[258] Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942.[259] In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.[259] In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation.[260] The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported.[261] In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.[262] Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed;[263] most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France.[264][265] The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.[266] The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries.[259][267] The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942.[268][269][270] The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs),[271][272] and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943.[273] Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory.[274] Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942.[275] Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas.[276][277] Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews[278] and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.[279] Perpetrators and beneficiaries Further information: Responsibility for the Holocaust Men and women in uniform smiling and posing with musical instruments Auschwitz SS guards and female staff auxiliaries enjoying themselves on vacation in Solahütte An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000.[280] Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.[281][282] The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate.[281][283] Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism.[284][285] In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement.[286][287][288] German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.[289][290] Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen, Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries, Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians.[281][291][292] Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism.[293][294][295] According to historian Christian Gerlach, non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.[296] Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide.[281] Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property.[297] Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps.[298] Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews.[299] Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses.[300] Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews.[301] Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables.[301][302] The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property.[303] In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.[304] Forced labor Further information: Forced labor in Nazi Germany People collecting refuse in a wagon Jews of Mogilev, Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941 See caption Woman with Ostarbeiter badge at work at IG-Farbenwerke in Auschwitz Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically.[305][306] After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions.[307] Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed.[308][309] They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival.[310][311] Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.[312] In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system.[313][314][d] Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp.[319] Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps.[320] Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.[321] Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor.[322] The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish[323] and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews.[324] Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died.[325] Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence.[326] Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor.[327] East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka, to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels[328][329][330] despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers,[331][332] which imposed the penalty of imprisonment[332] and death.[333][334] Escape and hiding A bunker with a bed and other supplies A bunker where Jews attempted to hide during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Further information: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe.[335] Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news.[336] Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.[337][338][339] The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe.[340] Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews.[341] Having money,[342] social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival.[343] Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation.[344][291][345] The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe.[346][347][348] Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out.[349][347][350] Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.[351] Jews participated in resistance movements in most European countries, and often were overrepresented.[352] Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews.[353][354] Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the Soviet partisans—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union.[355] An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in family camps in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the Bielski partisans.[356][357] International reactions Main article: International response to the Holocaust The Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation.[358] On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by the Polish government-in-exile, documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the Allies, then known as the United Nations, adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews.[359] Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.[360] During the war the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to Holocaust survivors. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.[361] Throughout the war, no detailed photo intelligence study was carried out on any of the major concentration or extermination camps.[362] Appeals from Jewish representatives to the American and British governments to bomb rail lines leading to the camps or crematoriums was rejected, with little to no input from the War Departments of the United States or United Kingdom.[363] However, debate exists on whether a military response would have impacted on the Holocaust.[364] Second half of the war Continuing killings see caption Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, annexed by Hungary in 1938,[365] on the selection ramp at Auschwitz II in May or June 1944. Men are lined up to the right, women and children to the left. About 25 percent were selected for work and the rest gassed.[221] After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war.[366][367] In early 1943, 45,000 Jews were deported from German-occupied northern Greece, primarily Salonica, to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed.[368] After Italy switched sides in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, with limited success.[369][370] Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities.[371] Most Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943.[372] Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in Eastern Europe.[189] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and destroyed.[373][374] The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews.[375] After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the deportation of 437,000 Jews in eight weeks, mostly to Auschwitz.[376][365][377] The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians.[378] Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of a last-ditch effort to increase the production of fighter aircraft.[309][379] Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.[380] Death marches and liberation see caption A mass grave at Bergen-Belsen after the camp's liberation, April 1945 Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics.[381] Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food.[382][383] Those who could not keep up were shot.[384] The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands.[385][383] In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border.[386][387] The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.[384][388] In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war.[335] At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor.[335] The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths.[382] Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches,[389] around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war.[390] Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves.[391][392][393] Some survivors were freed there[393] and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.[394] Death toll Main article: Holocaust victims see image description Holocaust deaths as an approximate percentage of the 1939 Jewish population: 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Low Around six million Jews were killed.[395][396][397] Of the six million victims, most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and with half from Poland alone.[398][399] Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war.[400] One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out.[401] Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas.[402] Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration[403] and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews.[404] Jewish children and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults.[405] It is considered to be the single largest genocide in human history.[406][407] The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was Operation Reinhard, which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide.[408] Between July to October 1942, two million Jews were murdered, including Operation Reinhard and other killings, with over three million Jews killed in 1942 alone, as stated by historian Christian Gerlach.[409] On the other hand, historian Alex J. Kay states that over two million Jews were murdered from late July to mid-November, stating that "these three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust".[410] It was the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.[411] On 3 November 1943, around 18,400 Jews were murdered at Majdanek over the course of nine hours, in what was the largest number ever killed in a death camp on a single day.[412] It was part of Operation Harvest Festival, the murder of some 43,000 Jews, the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces, occurring from 3 to 4 November 1943.[413] Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by Gilbert[414] and at over 11 million by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[415] In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority[416] or about half.[399] In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.[416] Aftermath and legacy Main article: Aftermath of the Holocaust Return home and emigration After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property,[417] and violent attacks such as the Kielce pogrom convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe.[418][393] Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution.[419] When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of displaced persons camps.[420] Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts.[421] Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948.[420] Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.[422] Criminal trials Further information: Category:Holocaust trials Rows of men sitting on benches Defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal, November 1945 Most Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes.[394] During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews.[423] Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' Genocide Convention in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the non-retroactivity of criminal laws.[424] In 1945 and 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 23 Nazi leaders primarily for waging wars of aggression, which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality;[425] nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage.[426] This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials[427]—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public.[428] West Germany later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators.[429][430] The high-level organizer Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and tried in Israel in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.[431][432] Reparations Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars,[433] or $170 billion in 2023.[72] This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted.[434] Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries.[434] Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the fall of Communism in eastern Europe.[435] Between 1945 and 2018, Germany paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated an agreement to pay DM 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the Claims Conference.[436] Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors.[437] Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries nationalized many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries.[438][439] Poland is the only member of the European Union that never passed any restitution legislation.[440] Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.[441][442] Remembrance and historiography A memorial of many square concrete blocks Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016 In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities.[443] The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness[444][445] as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.[446] Genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses asserted that "the Holocaust has gradually supplanted genocide as modernity's icon of evil",[447] while political scientist Scott Straus declared that "the Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event in the past century, represents the pinnacle of evil".[448] The Holocaust has been described as "perhaps the most savage and significant single crime in recorded history" and that of the most barbaric events in the twentieth century "the Holocaust probably ranks as the very worst".[449] Renowned German historian Wolfgang Benz described it as the "singularly most monstrous crime committed in the history of mankind".[450] Holocaust education, in which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time.[451][452] International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a different memorial day.[453] It has been commemorated in memorials, museums, and speeches, as well as works of culture such as novels, poems, films, and plays.[454] Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in some countries;[455] while denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern governments, figures and media. Although many are convinced that there are lessons or some kind of redemptive meaning to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed.[456][457][451] Communist states marginalized the topic of antisemitic persecution while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era.[458][459] In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries.[460] The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and an emotional rationale for committing to human rights. Participation in this memory is required of countries seeking entry.[461][462] In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized.[463] During Apartheid, the Holocaust was evoked widely and divergently, by Jews and non-Jews alike.[464] Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed.[451][465] In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms, in particular as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[461] The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and is considered to be the single most infamous case of genocide in European history as well.[466] It is the single most documented and studied genocide in history.[467][468] It is also seen as the archetype of genocide and the benchmark in genocide studies.[469][470] The scholarly literature on the Holocaust is massive, encompassing thousands of books.[471] The tendency to see the Holocaust as a unique or incomprehensible event continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians.[472][473][474] Scholar Omer Bartov points out how the Holocaust was unique in that it was "the industrial killing of millions of human beings in factories of death, ordered by a modern state, organized by a conscientious bureaucracy, and supported by a law-abiding, patriotic "civilized" society."[475] Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from Western civilization or was an aberration of it.[476] The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.[477] ***** The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups. The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews regardless of means to attempt to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. Terminology and scope Main article: Names of the Holocaust The term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning "burnt offering",[1] has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.[a] The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted,[b] especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians.[2][3][4] All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.[5] By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.[6] The Hebrew word Shoah ("catastrophic destruction") exclusively refers to Jewish victims.[7][8][2] The perpetrators used the phrase "Final Solution" as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews.[9] Background A postcard of a river with buildings behind it View of the Pegnitz River (c. 1900) with the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg, destroyed in 1938 during the November pogroms Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years.[10] Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus.[11][12] In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate.[13] By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns, spoke Yiddish, and practiced Orthodox Judaism.[14] Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews.[15][16] Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them.[17] Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe.[18][19] The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa.[20][21] World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries.[22] Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms.[23] Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory;[22] opposition to the postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum.[24][25] The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.[24][26] see caption 1919 Austrian postcard showing a Jew stabbing a German Army soldier in the back The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war,[27] and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust.[28] From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews, whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity".[5] The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders[29] and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements.[24][30] The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization.[31][32] These ideas appealed to many Germans.[33] The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the Soviet threat.[34] Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union, as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany.[35][36][37] Rise of Nazi Germany see caption Territorial expansion of Germany from 1933 to 1941 Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation, the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections,[38][39] by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery.[40][41] Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians.[38] Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media,[42] tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up.[43] The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps.[44] The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.[45][46][47] Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life,[48] Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime.[49][50] The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament.[42] The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support.[51] Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews[42] and other groups targeted by the Nazis.[46] Persecution of Jews Main article: The Holocaust in Germany Further information: Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe.[52][53][54] Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws.[55] In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service.[51] After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.[56] The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.[57][58] Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge, with varying rights.[59] The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country.[56] Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business.[60] In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.[58] A building that has been ransacked with debris strewn around View of the old synagogue in Aachen after its destruction during Kristallnacht Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939.[61] Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized.[62] As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close.[63] Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany.[64] On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed,[65] at least 90 Jews were murdered,[66] and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested,[67][68] although many were released within weeks.[69] German Jews were levied a special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM).[70][c] The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany.[73] By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa.[74] The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai, Mandatory Palestine, and South Africa.[75] Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM,[c] mostly from Jews.[76] The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.[77] Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule.[34] Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s.[78] In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad.[79][80] Start of World War II A large crowd of people with swastika banners Danzigers rallying for Hitler, shortly after the free city's annexation into Germany The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from the United Kingdom and France.[81] During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders;[82] there was also a great deal of looting.[83] Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance.[84] Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed.[85][86] The Auschwitz concentration camp was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges.[87] Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.[88] The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact.[89] The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war.[90][91] Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy.[92] In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Denmark and Norway.[81] In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.[81] Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule.[82] The war provided cover for "Aktion T4", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas.[88][93][94] The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews.[95] Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941.[96][97][98] Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war.[97][99] Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.[100][101] Ghettoization and resettlement Further information: The Holocaust in Poland People and buildings with an unpaved street Unpaved street in the Frysztak Ghetto, Krakow District People walking on a paved surface around a still body A body lying in the street of the Warsaw Ghetto in the General Governorate Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland.[54][102] The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths.[103] Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank, the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews.[104][105] After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar, but this proved impossible.[106][107] The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews.[106][105] In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941.[108] During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone.[109] Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor.[110] In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands.[111] Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.[110] The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators.[112][113] The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź, were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence.[114] Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it.[115] Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued.[116] A Jewish community leadership (Judenrat) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve.[117][118] Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.[119][120][121] Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe was common.[122] Invasion of the Soviet Union Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.[123][105] Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons,[124] what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism[125] was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war.[126][127] A quick victory was expected[128] and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers.[129] To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.[130][131] The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas.[132][133][134] Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped,[135] the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad, as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.[136][137] By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in the ghettos.[138] Public execution of Masha Bruskina, a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation,[139][140] making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews.[141][142] Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed.[143][144] About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare, including more than 300,000 in Belarus.[145][146] From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants.[147] During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot.[148] By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus.[149][150] Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported.[148][151] Although most of those killed were not Jews,[146][149] anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.[152] Mass shootings of Jews Further information: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and The Holocaust in Romania Half naked woman running, and a man carrying a bat At least 3,000 Jews were killed during the 1941 Lviv pogroms, mainly by local Ukrainians.[153] The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941.[154] During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews.[155][117] Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands.[156][157] Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.[158][159] Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942.[160][161] Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees.[162] The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews.[163][164] The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted.[165] The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews.[160] In July and August Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews.[166] At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too.[166][167] Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus.[168] Men rounded up and walking Original Nazi propaganda caption: "Too bad even for a bullet... The Jews shown here were shot at once." 28 June 1941 in Rozhanka, Belarus Men execute at least four Soviet civilians kneeling by the side of a mass grave Shooting from behind became popular because killers did not have to look at their victims' faces and the dead were likely to fall into the grave.[169] The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits.[170] The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet.[171] In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards.[170] Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants.[172] Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Białystok, and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.[117] Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere.[173] Besides Germany, Romania killed the largest number of Jews.[174][175] Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943.[176] Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000.[177] Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine.[178][179] At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration.[180][181] Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk.[182][183] In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews.[173][184] Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.[185] After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them.[166] In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews.[170][186][187] By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive.[188] By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot[189] and as many as 225,000 Roma.[190] The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.[191] Systematic deportations across Europe Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe,[192] but there is disagreement when.[193][194] Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941.[193][195] Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later.[193] On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.[196][197] The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his 1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."[197][198] It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.[197] Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy.[199] The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.[200][201] Extermination camps Main article: Extermination camp Deportation to Chełmno Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust.[202] The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans.[203][204][205] In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik[206] began work planning Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on the previous Aktion T4 programme[207][208]—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate.[209][203] In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered.[210][211] In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps[212] after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941.[213][208] The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice.[206] The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby.[214] Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars. As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar. Many died en route, partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports.[215][216] Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations.[217] Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber.[218] Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes.[219][197] The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning.[220] At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor,[221] although many of these prisoners died later on[222] through starvation, mass shooting, torture,[223] and medical experiments.[224] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs.[225][226] Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards.[227][216] About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas.[228] Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps.[229] Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.[230][231] Major extermination camps[232] CampLocationNumber of Jews killedKilling technologyPlanning beganMass gassing duration ChełmnoWartheland[232]150,000[232]Gas vans[232]July 1941[232]8 December 1941 – April 1943 and April–July 1944[233] BelzecLublin District[232]440,823–596,200[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]October 1941[233]17 March 1942 – December 1942[233] SobiborLublin District[232]170,618–238,900[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]Late 1941 or March 1942[235]May 1942 – October 1942[235] TreblinkaWarsaw District[232]780,863–951,800[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]April 1942[232]23 July 1942 – October 1943[232] Auschwitz II–BirkenauEast Upper Silesia[232]900,000–1,000,000[232]Stationary gas chamber, hydrogen cyanide[232]September 1941 (built as POW camp)[212][232]February 1942 – October 1944[232] Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland Further information: Operation Reinhard See caption Cumulative murders of Jews from the General Governorate at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943 Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market.[236] In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere.[237][238] By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor;[236] for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared.[239] The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps.[240][238] During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.[241] In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.[242] Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action.[243] In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later.[244] Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.[242] A young boy surrounded by other unarmed civilians holds his hands over his head while a man in uniform points a submachine gun in his direction The Warsaw Ghetto uprising became significant as a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis.[244] The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late.[245] During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka.[246][247] At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz.[248] 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia, Podolia, and southwestern Belarus.[249][250] Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews.[251] Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire.[252] These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain.[253] In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw, Białystok, and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons.[254] The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the Wola Massacre, or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing.[255] Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.[256] Deportations from elsewhere A column of people marching with luggage Jews are deported from Würzburg, Germany to the Lublin District of the General Governorate, 25 April 1942. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.[201] Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees.[257] If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps.[258] Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942.[259] In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.[259] In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation.[260] The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported.[261] In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.[262] Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed;[263] most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France.[264][265] The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.[266] The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries.[259][267] The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942.[268][269][270] The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs),[271][272] and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943.[273] Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory.[274] Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942.[275] Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas.[276][277] Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews[278] and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.[279] Perpetrators and beneficiaries Further information: Responsibility for the Holocaust Men and women in uniform smiling and posing with musical instruments Auschwitz SS guards and female staff auxiliaries enjoying themselves on vacation in Solahütte An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000.[280] Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.[281][282] The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate.[281][283] Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism.[284][285] In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement.[286][287][288] German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.[289][290] Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen, Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries, Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians.[281][291][292] Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism.[293][294][295] According to historian Christian Gerlach, non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.[296] Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide.[281] Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property.[297] Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps.[298] Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews.[299] Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses.[300] Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews.[301] Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables.[301][302] The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property.[303] In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.[304] Forced labor Further information: Forced labor in Nazi Germany People collecting refuse in a wagon Jews of Mogilev, Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941 See caption Woman with Ostarbeiter badge at work at IG-Farbenwerke in Auschwitz Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically.[305][306] After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions.[307] Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed.[308][309] They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival.[310][311] Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.[312] In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system.[313][314][d] Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp.[319] Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps.[320] Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.[321] Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor.[322] The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish[323] and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews.[324] Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died.[325] Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence.[326] Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor.[327] East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka, to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels[328][329][330] despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers,[331][332] which imposed the penalty of imprisonment[332] and death.[333][334] Escape and hiding A bunker with a bed and other supplies A bunker where Jews attempted to hide during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Further information: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe.[335] Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news.[336] Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.[337][338][339] The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe.[340] Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews.[341] Having money,[342] social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival.[343] Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation.[344][291][345] The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe.[346][347][348] Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out.[349][347][350] Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.[351] Jews participated in resistance movements in most European countries, and often were overrepresented.[352] Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews.[353][354] Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the Soviet partisans—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union.[355] An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in family camps in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the Bielski partisans.[356][357] International reactions Main article: International response to the Holocaust The Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation.[358] On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by the Polish government-in-exile, documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the Allies, then known as the United Nations, adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews.[359] Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.[360] During the war the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to Holocaust survivors. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.[361] Throughout the war, no detailed photo intelligence study was carried out on any of the major concentration or extermination camps.[362] Appeals from Jewish representatives to the American and British governments to bomb rail lines leading to the camps or crematoriums was rejected, with little to no input from the War Departments of the United States or United Kingdom.[363] However, debate exists on whether a military response would have impacted on the Holocaust.[364] Second half of the war Continuing killings see caption Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, annexed by Hungary in 1938,[365] on the selection ramp at Auschwitz II in May or June 1944. Men are lined up to the right, women and children to the left. About 25 percent were selected for work and the rest gassed.[221] After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war.[366][367] In early 1943, 45,000 Jews were deported from German-occupied northern Greece, primarily Salonica, to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed.[368] After Italy switched sides in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, with limited success.[369][370] Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities.[371] Most Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943.[372] Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in Eastern Europe.[189] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and destroyed.[373][374] The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews.[375] After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the deportation of 437,000 Jews in eight weeks, mostly to Auschwitz.[376][365][377] The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians.[378] Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of a last-ditch effort to increase the production of fighter aircraft.[309][379] Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.[380] Death marches and liberation see caption A mass grave at Bergen-Belsen after the camp's liberation, April 1945 Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics.[381] Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food.[382][383] Those who could not keep up were shot.[384] The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands.[385][383] In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border.[386][387] The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.[384][388] In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war.[335] At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor.[335] The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths.[382] Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches,[389] around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war.[390] Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves.[391][392][393] Some survivors were freed there[393] and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.[394] Death toll Main article: Holocaust victims see image description Holocaust deaths as an approximate percentage of the 1939 Jewish population: 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Low Around six million Jews were killed.[395][396][397] Of the six million victims, most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and with half from Poland alone.[398][399] Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war.[400] One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out.[401] Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas.[402] Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration[403] and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews.[404] Jewish children and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults.[405] It is considered to be the single largest genocide in human history.[406][407] The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was Operation Reinhard, which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide.[408] Between July to October 1942, two million Jews were murdered, including Operation Reinhard and other killings, with over three million Jews killed in 1942 alone, as stated by historian Christian Gerlach.[409] On the other hand, historian Alex J. Kay states that over two million Jews were murdered from late July to mid-November, stating that "these three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust".[410] It was the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.[411] On 3 November 1943, around 18,400 Jews were murdered at Majdanek over the course of nine hours, in what was the largest number ever killed in a death camp on a single day.[412] It was part of Operation Harvest Festival, the murder of some 43,000 Jews, the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces, occurring from 3 to 4 November 1943.[413] Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by Gilbert[414] and at over 11 million by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[415] In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority[416] or about half.[399] In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.[416] Aftermath and legacy Main article: Aftermath of the Holocaust Return home and emigration After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property,[417] and violent attacks such as the Kielce pogrom convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe.[418][393] Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution.[419] When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of displaced persons camps.[420] Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts.[421] Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948.[420] Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.[422] Criminal trials Further information: Category:Holocaust trials Rows of men sitting on benches Defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal, November 1945 Most Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes.[394] During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews.[423] Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' Genocide Convention in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the non-retroactivity of criminal laws.[424] In 1945 and 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 23 Nazi leaders primarily for waging wars of aggression, which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality;[425] nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage.[426] This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials[427]—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public.[428] West Germany later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators.[429][430] The high-level organizer Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and tried in Israel in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.[431][432] Reparations Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars,[433] or $170 billion in 2023.[72] This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted.[434] Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries.[434] Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the fall of Communism in eastern Europe.[435] Between 1945 and 2018, Germany paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated an agreement to pay DM 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the Claims Conference.[436] Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors.[437] Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries nationalized many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries.[438][439] Poland is the only member of the European Union that never passed any restitution legislation.[440] Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.[441][442] Remembrance and historiography A memorial of many square concrete blocks Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016 In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities.[443] The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness[444][445] as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.[446] Genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses asserted that "the Holocaust has gradually supplanted genocide as modernity's icon of evil",[447] while political scientist Scott Straus declared that "the Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event in the past century, represents the pinnacle of evil".[448] The Holocaust has been described as "perhaps the most savage and significant single crime in recorded history" and that of the most barbaric events in the twentieth century "the Holocaust probably ranks as the very worst".[449] Renowned German historian Wolfgang Benz described it as the "singularly most monstrous crime committed in the history of mankind".[450] Holocaust education, in which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time.[451][452] International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a different memorial day.[453] It has been commemorated in memorials, museums, and speeches, as well as works of culture such as novels, poems, films, and plays.[454] Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in some countries;[455] while denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern governments, figures and media. Although many are convinced that there are lessons or some kind of redemptive meaning to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed.[456][457][451] Communist states marginalized the topic of antisemitic persecution while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era.[458][459] In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries.[460] The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and an emotional rationale for committing to human rights. Participation in this memory is required of countries seeking entry.[461][462] In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized.[463] During Apartheid, the Holocaust was evoked widely and divergently, by Jews and non-Jews alike.[464] Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed.[451][465] In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms, in particular as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[461] The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and is considered to be the single most infamous case of genocide in European history as well.[466] It is the single most documented and studied genocide in history.[467][468] It is also seen as the archetype of genocide and the benchmark in genocide studies.[469][470] The scholarly literature on the Holocaust is massive, encompassing thousands of books.[471] The tendency to see the Holocaust as a unique or incomprehensible event continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians.[472][473][474] Scholar Omer Bartov points out how the Holocaust was unique in that it was "the industrial killing of millions of human beings in factories of death, ordered by a modern state, organized by a conscientious bureaucracy, and supported by a law-abiding, patriotic "civilized" society."[475] Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from Western civilization or was an aberration of it.[476] The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.[477]The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups. The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews regardless of means to attempt to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. Terminology and scope Main article: Names of the Holocaust The term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning "burnt offering",[1] has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.[a] The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted,[b] especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians.[2][3][4] All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.[5] By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.[6] The Hebrew word Shoah ("catastrophic destruction") exclusively refers to Jewish victims.[7][8][2] The perpetrators used the phrase "Final Solution" as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews.[9] Background A postcard of a river with buildings behind it View of the Pegnitz River (c. 1900) with the Grand Synagogue of Nuremberg, destroyed in 1938 during the November pogroms Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years.[10] Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus.[11][12] In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate.[13] By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns, spoke Yiddish, and practiced Orthodox Judaism.[14] Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews.[15][16] Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them.[17] Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe.[18][19] The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa.[20][21] World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries.[22] Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms.[23] Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory;[22] opposition to the postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum.[24][25] The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.[24][26] see caption 1919 Austrian postcard showing a Jew stabbing a German Army soldier in the back The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war,[27] and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust.[28] From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews, whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity".[5] The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders[29] and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements.[24][30] The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization.[31][32] These ideas appealed to many Germans.[33] The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the Soviet threat.[34] Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union, as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany.[35][36][37] Rise of Nazi Germany see caption Territorial expansion of Germany from 1933 to 1941 Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation, the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections,[38][39] by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery.[40][41] Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians.[38] Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media,[42] tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up.[43] The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps.[44] The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.[45][46][47] Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life,[48] Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime.[49][50] The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament.[42] The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support.[51] Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews[42] and other groups targeted by the Nazis.[46] Persecution of Jews Main article: The Holocaust in Germany Further information: Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe.[52][53][54] Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws.[55] In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service.[51] After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.[56] The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.[57][58] Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge, with varying rights.[59] The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country.[56] Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business.[60] In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.[58] A building that has been ransacked with debris strewn around View of the old synagogue in Aachen after its destruction during Kristallnacht Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939.[61] Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized.[62] As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close.[63] Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany.[64] On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed,[65] at least 90 Jews were murdered,[66] and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested,[67][68] although many were released within weeks.[69] German Jews were levied a special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM).[70][c] The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany.[73] By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa.[74] The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai, Mandatory Palestine, and South Africa.[75] Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM,[c] mostly from Jews.[76] The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.[77] Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule.[34] Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s.[78] In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad.[79][80] Start of World War II A large crowd of people with swastika banners Danzigers rallying for Hitler, shortly after the free city's annexation into Germany The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from the United Kingdom and France.[81] During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders;[82] there was also a great deal of looting.[83] Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance.[84] Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed.[85][86] The Auschwitz concentration camp was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges.[87] Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.[88] The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact.[89] The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war.[90][91] Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy.[92] In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Denmark and Norway.[81] In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.[81] Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule.[82] The war provided cover for "Aktion T4", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas.[88][93][94] The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews.[95] Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941.[96][97][98] Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war.[97][99] Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.[100][101] Ghettoization and resettlement Further information: The Holocaust in Poland People and buildings with an unpaved street Unpaved street in the Frysztak Ghetto, Krakow District People walking on a paved surface around a still body A body lying in the street of the Warsaw Ghetto in the General Governorate Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland.[54][102] The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths.[103] Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank, the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews.[104][105] After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar, but this proved impossible.[106][107] The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews.[106][105] In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941.[108] During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone.[109] Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor.[110] In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands.[111] Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.[110] The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators.[112][113] The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź, were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence.[114] Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it.[115] Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued.[116] A Jewish community leadership (Judenrat) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve.[117][118] Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.[119][120][121] Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe was common.[122] Invasion of the Soviet Union Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.[123][105] Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons,[124] what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism[125] was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war.[126][127] A quick victory was expected[128] and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers.[129] To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.[130][131] The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas.[132][133][134] Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped,[135] the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad, as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.[136][137] By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in the ghettos.[138] Public execution of Masha Bruskina, a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation,[139][140] making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews.[141][142] Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed.[143][144] About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare, including more than 300,000 in Belarus.[145][146] From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants.[147] During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot.[148] By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus.[149][150] Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported.[148][151] Although most of those killed were not Jews,[146][149] anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.[152] Mass shootings of Jews Further information: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and The Holocaust in Romania Half naked woman running, and a man carrying a bat At least 3,000 Jews were killed during the 1941 Lviv pogroms, mainly by local Ukrainians.[153] The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941.[154] During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews.[155][117] Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands.[156][157] Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.[158][159] Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942.[160][161] Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees.[162] The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews.[163][164] The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted.[165] The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews.[160] In July and August Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews.[166] At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too.[166][167] Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus.[168] Men rounded up and walking Original Nazi propaganda caption: "Too bad even for a bullet... The Jews shown here were shot at once." 28 June 1941 in Rozhanka, Belarus Men execute at least four Soviet civilians kneeling by the side of a mass grave Shooting from behind became popular because killers did not have to look at their victims' faces and the dead were likely to fall into the grave.[169] The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits.[170] The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet.[171] In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards.[170] Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants.[172] Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Białystok, and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.[117] Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere.[173] Besides Germany, Romania killed the largest number of Jews.[174][175] Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943.[176] Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000.[177] Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine.[178][179] At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration.[180][181] Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk.[182][183] In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews.[173][184] Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.[185] After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them.[166] In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews.[170][186][187] By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive.[188] By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot[189] and as many as 225,000 Roma.[190] The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.[191] Systematic deportations across Europe Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe,[192] but there is disagreement when.[193][194] Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941.[193][195] Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later.[193] On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.[196][197] The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his 1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."[197][198] It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.[197] Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy.[199] The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.[200][201] Extermination camps Main article: Extermination camp Deportation to Chełmno Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust.[202] The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans.[203][204][205] In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik[206] began work planning Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on the previous Aktion T4 programme[207][208]—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate.[209][203] In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered.[210][211] In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps[212] after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941.[213][208] The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice.[206] The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby.[214] Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars. As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar. Many died en route, partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports.[215][216] Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations.[217] Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber.[218] Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes.[219][197] The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning.[220] At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor,[221] although many of these prisoners died later on[222] through starvation, mass shooting, torture,[223] and medical experiments.[224] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs.[225][226] Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards.[227][216] About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas.[228] Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps.[229] Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.[230][231] Major extermination camps[232] CampLocationNumber of Jews killedKilling technologyPlanning beganMass gassing duration ChełmnoWartheland[232]150,000[232]Gas vans[232]July 1941[232]8 December 1941 – April 1943 and April–July 1944[233] BelzecLublin District[232]440,823–596,200[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]October 1941[233]17 March 1942 – December 1942[233] SobiborLublin District[232]170,618–238,900[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]Late 1941 or March 1942[235]May 1942 – October 1942[235] TreblinkaWarsaw District[232]780,863–951,800[234]Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust[232]April 1942[232]23 July 1942 – October 1943[232] Auschwitz II–BirkenauEast Upper Silesia[232]900,000–1,000,000[232]Stationary gas chamber, hydrogen cyanide[232]September 1941 (built as POW camp)[212][232]February 1942 – October 1944[232] Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland Further information: Operation Reinhard See caption Cumulative murders of Jews from the General Governorate at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka from January 1942 to February 1943 Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market.[236] In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere.[237][238] By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor;[236] for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared.[239] The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps.[240][238] During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.[241] In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.[242] Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action.[243] In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later.[244] Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.[242] A young boy surrounded by other unarmed civilians holds his hands over his head while a man in uniform points a submachine gun in his direction The Warsaw Ghetto uprising became significant as a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis.[244] The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late.[245] During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka.[246][247] At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz.[248] 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia, Podolia, and southwestern Belarus.[249][250] Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews.[251] Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire.[252] These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain.[253] In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw, Białystok, and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons.[254] The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the Wola Massacre, or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing.[255] Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.[256] Deportations from elsewhere A column of people marching with luggage Jews are deported from Würzburg, Germany to the Lublin District of the General Governorate, 25 April 1942. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.[201] Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees.[257] If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps.[258] Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942.[259] In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.[259] In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation.[260] The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported.[261] In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.[262] Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed;[263] most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France.[264][265] The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.[266] The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries.[259][267] The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942.[268][269][270] The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs),[271][272] and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943.[273] Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory.[274] Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942.[275] Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas.[276][277] Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews[278] and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.[279] Perpetrators and beneficiaries Further information: Responsibility for the Holocaust Men and women in uniform smiling and posing with musical instruments Auschwitz SS guards and female staff auxiliaries enjoying themselves on vacation in Solahütte An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000.[280] Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.[281][282] The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate.[281][283] Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism.[284][285] In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement.[286][287][288] German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.[289][290] Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen, Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries, Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians.[281][291][292] Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism.[293][294][295] According to historian Christian Gerlach, non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.[296] Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide.[281] Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property.[297] Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps.[298] Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews.[299] Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses.[300] Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews.[301] Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables.[301][302] The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property.[303] In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.[304] Forced labor Further information: Forced labor in Nazi Germany People collecting refuse in a wagon Jews of Mogilev, Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941 See caption Woman with Ostarbeiter badge at work at IG-Farbenwerke in Auschwitz Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically.[305][306] After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions.[307] Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed.[308][309] They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival.[310][311] Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.[312] In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system.[313][314][d] Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp.[319] Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps.[320] Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.[321] Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor.[322] The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish[323] and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews.[324] Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died.[325] Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence.[326] Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor.[327] East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka, to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels[328][329][330] despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers,[331][332] which imposed the penalty of imprisonment[332] and death.[333][334] Escape and hiding A bunker with a bed and other supplies A bunker where Jews attempted to hide during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Further information: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe.[335] Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news.[336] Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.[337][338][339] The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe.[340] Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews.[341] Having money,[342] social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival.[343] Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation.[344][291][345] The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe.[346][347][348] Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out.[349][347][350] Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.[351] Jews participated in resistance movements in most European countries, and often were overrepresented.[352] Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews.[353][354] Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the Soviet partisans—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union.[355] An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in family camps in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the Bielski partisans.[356][357] International reactions Main article: International response to the Holocaust The Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation.[358] On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by the Polish government-in-exile, documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the Allies, then known as the United Nations, adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews.[359] Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.[360] During the war the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to Holocaust survivors. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.[361] Throughout the war, no detailed photo intelligence study was carried out on any of the major concentration or extermination camps.[362] Appeals from Jewish representatives to the American and British governments to bomb rail lines leading to the camps or crematoriums was rejected, with little to no input from the War Departments of the United States or United Kingdom.[363] However, debate exists on whether a military response would have impacted on the Holocaust.[364] Second half of the war Continuing killings see caption Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, annexed by Hungary in 1938,[365] on the selection ramp at Auschwitz II in May or June 1944. Men are lined up to the right, women and children to the left. About 25 percent were selected for work and the rest gassed.[221] After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war.[366][367] In early 1943, 45,000 Jews were deported from German-occupied northern Greece, primarily Salonica, to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed.[368] After Italy switched sides in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, with limited success.[369][370] Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities.[371] Most Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943.[372] Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in Eastern Europe.[189] Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and destroyed.[373][374] The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews.[375] After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the deportation of 437,000 Jews in eight weeks, mostly to Auschwitz.[376][365][377] The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians.[378] Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of a last-ditch effort to increase the production of fighter aircraft.[309][379] Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.[380] Death marches and liberation see caption A mass grave at Bergen-Belsen after the camp's liberation, April 1945 Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics.[381] Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food.[382][383] Those who could not keep up were shot.[384] The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands.[385][383] In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border.[386][387] The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.[384][388] In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war.[335] At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor.[335] The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths.[382] Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches,[389] around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war.[390] Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves.[391][392][393] Some survivors were freed there[393] and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.[394] Death toll Main article: Holocaust victims see image description Holocaust deaths as an approximate percentage of the 1939 Jewish population: 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Low Around six million Jews were killed.[395][396][397] Of the six million victims, most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and with half from Poland alone.[398][399] Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war.[400] One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out.[401] Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas.[402] Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration[403] and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews.[404] Jewish children and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults.[405] It is considered to be the single largest genocide in human history.[406][407] The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was Operation Reinhard, which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide.[408] Between July to October 1942, two million Jews were murdered, including Operation Reinhard and other killings, with over three million Jews killed in 1942 alone, as stated by historian Christian Gerlach.[409] On the other hand, historian Alex J. Kay states that over two million Jews were murdered from late July to mid-November, stating that "these three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust".[410] It was the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.[411] On 3 November 1943, around 18,400 Jews were murdered at Majdanek over the course of nine hours, in what was the largest number ever killed in a death camp on a single day.[412] It was part of Operation Harvest Festival, the murder of some 43,000 Jews, the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces, occurring from 3 to 4 November 1943.[413] Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by Gilbert[414] and at over 11 million by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[415] In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority[416] or about half.[399] In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.[416] Aftermath and legacy Main article: Aftermath of the Holocaust Return home and emigration After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property,[417] and violent attacks such as the Kielce pogrom convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe.[418][393] Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution.[419] When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of displaced persons camps.[420] Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts.[421] Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948.[420] Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.[422] Criminal trials Further information: Category:Holocaust trials Rows of men sitting on benches Defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal, November 1945 Most Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes.[394] During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews.[423] Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' Genocide Convention in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the non-retroactivity of criminal laws.[424] In 1945 and 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 23 Nazi leaders primarily for waging wars of aggression, which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality;[425] nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage.[426] This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials[427]—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public.[428] West Germany later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators.[429][430] The high-level organizer Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and tried in Israel in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.[431][432] Reparations Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars,[433] or $170 billion in 2023.[72] This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted.[434] Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries.[434] Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the fall of Communism in eastern Europe.[435] Between 1945 and 2018, Germany paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated an agreement to pay DM 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the Claims Conference.[436] Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors.[437] Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries nationalized many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries.[438][439] Poland is the only member of the European Union that never passed any restitution legislation.[440] Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.[441][442] Remembrance and historiography A memorial of many square concrete blocks Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016 In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities.[443] The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness[444][445] as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.[446] Genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses asserted that "the Holocaust has gradually supplanted genocide as modernity's icon of evil",[447] while political scientist Scott Straus declared that "the Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event in the past century, represents the pinnacle of evil".[448] The Holocaust has been described as "perhaps the most savage and significant single crime in recorded history" and that of the most barbaric events in the twentieth century "the Holocaust probably ranks as the very worst".[449] Renowned German historian Wolfgang Benz described it as the "singularly most monstrous crime committed in the history of mankind".[450] Holocaust education, in which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time.[451][452] International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a different memorial day.[453] It has been commemorated in memorials, museums, and speeches, as well as works of culture such as novels, poems, films, and plays.[454] Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in some countries;[455] while denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern governments, figures and media. Although many are convinced that there are lessons or some kind of redemptive meaning to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed.[456][457][451] Communist states marginalized the topic of antisemitic persecution while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era.[458][459] In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries.[460] The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and an emotional rationale for committing to human rights. Participation in this memory is required of countries seeking entry.[461][462] In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized.[463] During Apartheid, the Holocaust was evoked widely and divergently, by Jews and non-Jews alike.[464] Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed.[451][465] In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms, in particular as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[461] The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and is considered to be the single most infamous case of genocide in European history as well.[466] It is the single most documented and studied genocide in history.[467][468] It is also seen as the archetype of genocide and the benchmark in genocide studies.[469][470] The scholarly literature on the Holocaust is massive, encompassing thousands of books.[471] The tendency to see the Holocaust as a unique or incomprehensible event continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians.[472][473][474] Scholar Omer Bartov points out how the Holocaust was unique in that it was "the industrial killing of millions of human beings in factories of death, ordered by a modern state, organized by a conscientious bureaucracy, and supported by a law-abiding, patriotic "civilized" society."[475] Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from Western civilization or was an aberration of it.[476] The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.[477] ***** Introduction to the Holocaust The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945. Key Facts 1 Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the hatred of or prejudice against Jews, was a basic tenet of Nazi ideology. This prejudice was also widespread throughout Europe. 2 Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews evolved and became increasingly more radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in the mass murder of six million Jews. 3 During World War II, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings and gassings, and specially designed killing centers. Skip complementary section (continue reading) Cite Share Print Tags Holocaust Final Solution Third Reich World War II genocide Nazi Party Language English Listen to a human-read audio version of this article The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. In addition to perpetrating the Holocaust, Nazi Germany also persecuted and murdered millions of other victims. What was the Holocaust? The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as “the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.” Members of the Storm Troopers (SA), with boycott signs, block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop. Photo Boycott of Jewish-owned businesses(Photo) Members of the Storm Troopers (SA), with boycott signs, block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop. One of the signs exhorts: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933. Credits: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out the mass murder of Jews. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. Among other antisemitic measures, the Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organized violence targeting Germany’s Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The “Final Solution” was the organized and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945. By the end of the Holocaust, the Nazi German regime and their allies and collaborators had murdered six million European Jews. Why did the Nazis target Jews? The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview. The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany’s social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany’s defeat in World War I (1914–1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the fear of communism, and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism. However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the Middle Ages (500–1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in early modern Europe (1400–1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, other types of antisemitism took hold in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. These new forms included economic, nationalist, and racial antisemitism. In the 19th century, antisemites falsely claimed that Jews were responsible for many social and political ills in modern, industrial society. Theories of race, eugenics, and Social Darwinism falsely justified these hatreds. Nazi prejudice against Jews drew upon all of these elements, but especially racial antisemitism. Racial antisemitism is the discriminatory idea that Jews are a separate and inferior race. Chart with the title: "Die Nürnberger Gesetze." [Nuremberg Race Laws]. Photo Chart with the title "Die Nürnberger Gesetze" [Nuremberg Race Laws](Photo) Chart with the title "Die Nürnberger Gesetze" [Nuremberg Race Laws]. In the fall of 1935, German Jews lost their citizenship according to the definitions posed in these new regulations. Only "full" Germans were entitled to the full protection of the law. This chart was used to aid Germans in understanding the laws. White circles represent "Aryan" Germans, black circles represent Jews, and partially shaded circles represent “mixed raced” individuals. The chart has columns explaining the "Deutschbluetiger" [German-bloods], "Mischling 2. Grades" [Half-breeds 2. Grade], "Mischling 1. Grades" [Half-breeds 1. Grade], and "Jude" [Jew]. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum The Nazi Party promoted a particularly virulent form of racial antisemitism. It was central to the party’s race-based worldview. The Nazis believed that the world was divided into distinct races and that some of these races were superior to others. They considered Germans to be members of the supposedly superior “Aryan” race. They asserted that “Aryans” were locked in a struggle for existence with other, inferior races. Further, the Nazis believed that the so-called “Jewish race” was the most inferior and dangerous of all. According to the Nazis, Jews were a threat that needed to be removed from German society. Otherwise, the Nazis insisted, the “Jewish race” would permanently corrupt and destroy the German people. The Nazis’ race-based definition of Jews included many persons who identified as Christians or did not practice Judaism. Where did the Holocaust take place? The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people. The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate. But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control. Nazi Germany’s territorial expansion began in 1938–1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939–1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan. By 1942—as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances—Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews. Media Essay Geography of the Holocaust(Media Essay) The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust was a German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people. By the end of the war, 6 million Jews and millions of other victims were dead. Item 1 of 10 : German prewar territorial gains German prewar territorial gains European rail system, 1939 The European rail network played a crucial role in the implementation of the Final Solution. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation meant transit to killing centers for most Jews. Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states to hand over their Jews. German conquests in Europe, 1939-1942 In World War II, Germany sought to defeat its opponents in a series of short campaigns in Europe. Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years. Germany defeated and occupied Poland (attacked in September 1939), Denmark (April 1940), Norway (April 1940), Belgium (May 1940), the Netherlands (May 1940), Luxembourg (May 1940), France (May 1940), Yugoslavia (April 1941), and Greece (April 1941). Yet Germany did not defeat Great Britain, which was protected from German ground attack by the English Channel and the Royal Navy. On June 22, 1941, German forces suddenly invaded the Soviet Union. But Germany proved unable to defeat the Soviet Union, which together with Great Britain and the United States turned the tide of battle and ultimately defeated Germany in May 1945. Major ghettos in occupied Europe During World War II, the Germans established ghettos mainly in eastern Europe (between 1939 and 1942) and also in Hungary (in 1944). These ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions. The Germans regarded the establishment of Jewish ghettos as a provisional measure to control, isolate, and segregate Jews. Beginning in 1942, after the decision had been made to kill the Jews, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos, deporting the Jews to extermination camps where they were killed. Einsatzgruppen massacres in eastern Europe German administration of Europe, 1944 Major Nazi camps in Europe, January 1944 Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor. Transit camps such as Westerbork, Gurs, Mechelen, and Drancy in western Europe and concentration camps like Bolzano and Fossoli di Carpi in Italy were used as collection centers for Jews, who were then deported by rail to the extermination camps. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945. Major death marches and evacuations, 1944-1945 In January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. As Allied forces approached Nazi camps, the SS organized death marches of concentration camp inmates, in part to keep large numbers of concentration camp prisoners from falling into Allied hands. The term "death march" was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners. It referred to forced marches of concentration camp prisoners over long distances under heavy guard and extremely harsh conditions. During death marches, SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners and killed many. The largest death marches were launched from Auschwitz and Stutthof. Liberation of major Nazi camps, 1944-1945 As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived death marches into the interior of Germany. Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching the Majdanek camp near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to demolish the camp in an effort to hide the evidence of mass murder. The Soviets also liberated major Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück. US forces liberated the Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen camps. British forces liberated camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. Major camps for Jewish displaced persons, 1945-1946 Following World War II, several hundred thousand Jewish survivors remained in camps for displaced persons. The Allies established such camps in Allied-occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy for refugees waiting to leave Europe. Most Jewish DPs preferred to emigrate to Palestine but many also sought entry into the United States. They decided to remain in the DP camps until they could leave Europe. At the end of 1946 the number of Jewish DPs was estimated at 250,000, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy. Most of the Jewish DPs were refugees from Poland, many of whom had fled the Germans into the interior of the Soviet Union during the war. Other Jewish DPs came from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people? Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish. Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms: Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws. These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws. Various forms of public identification and exclusion. These included antisemitic propaganda, boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, public humiliation, and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing). Organized violence. The most notable example is Kristallnacht. There were also isolated incidents and other pogroms (violent riots). Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities. Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews in overcrowded ghettos, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions. Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews’ property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust. Forced labor. Jews had to perform forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses. Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. They referred to this plan as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” What was the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”? The Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (“Endlösung der Judenfrage”) was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period. A group of young girls pose in a yard in the town of Eisiskes. The Jews of this shtetl were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen on September 21, 1941. Photo taken before September 1941. Photo Young girls pose in a yard in the town of Ejszyszki (Eishyshok)(Photo) A group of young girls poses in a yard in the town of Ejszyszki (Eishyshok). The Jews of this shtetl were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen on September 21, 1941. Photo taken before September 1941. Credits: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of The Shtetl Foundation View Archival Details(External website) As part of the “Final Solution,” Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans. Mass Shootings The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents. Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust. Germans also carried out mass shootings at killing sites in occupied eastern Europe. Typically these were located near large cities. These sites included Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga, and Maly Trostenets near Minsk. At these killing sites, Germans and local collaborators murdered tens of thousands of Jews from the Kovno, Riga, and Minsk ghettos. They also shot tens of thousands of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans. The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included Einsatzgruppen (special task forces of the SS and police), Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS units. The German military (Wehrmacht) provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials. As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces. Killing Centers Photograph of Dawid Samoszul Photo Photograph of Dawid Samoszul(Photo) Close-up street portrait of Dawid Samoszul, probably taken in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland, between 1936 and 1938. Dawid was killed in the Treblinka killing center at the age of 9. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Abe Samelson View Archival Details(External website) In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called “extermination camps” or “death camps.” Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans. German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers “resettlement actions” or “evacuation transports.” In English, they are often referred to as “deportations.” Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system, as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars. The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions. The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor. My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother." —Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims’ belongings and remove victims’ bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria. Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers. What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust? Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder. German officials first created ghettos in 1939–1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary. The Purpose of the Ghettos German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos. Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling. Life in the Ghettos Oral History Charlene Schiff describes conditions in the Horochow ghetto(Oral History) Both of Charlene's parents were local Jewish community leaders, and the family was active in community life. Charlene's father was a professor of philosophy at the State University of Lvov. World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Charlene's town was in the part of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Under the Soviet occupation, the family remained in its home and Charlene's father continued to teach. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and arrested Charlene's father after they occupied the town. She never saw him again. Charlene, her mother, and sister were forced into a ghetto the Germans established in Horochow. In 1942, Charlene and her mother fled from the ghetto after hearing rumors that the Germans were about to destroy it. Her sister attempted to hide separately, but was never heard from again. Charlene and her mother hid in underbrush at the river's edge, and avoided discovery by submerging themselves in the water for part of the time. They hid for several days. One day, Charlene awoke to find that her mother had disappeared. Charlene survived by herself in the forests near Horochow, and was liberated by Soviet troops. She eventually immigrated to the United States. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection View Archival Details(External website) Life in the ghettos was miserable and dangerous. There was little food and limited sanitation or medical care. Hundreds of thousands of people died by starvation; rampant disease; exposure to extreme temperatures; as well as exhaustion from forced labor. Germans also murdered the imprisoned Jews through brutal beatings, torture, arbitrary shootings, and other forms of arbitrary violence. Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of spiritual resistance. Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Liquidating the Ghettos Beginning in 1941–1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process “liquidation.” It was part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes. Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution? Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution. At the highest level, Adolf Hitler inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe’s Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann. However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals. German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals Adolf Hitler addresses an SA rally, Dortmund, Germany, 1933 Photo Adolf Hitler addresses an SA rally(Photo) Adolf Hitler addresses an SA rally. Dortmund, Germany, 1933. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of William O. McWorkman View Archival Details(External website) Nazi leaders relied on many German institutions and organizations to help them carry out the Holocaust. Members of Nazi organizations initiated and carried out many anti-Jewish actions before and during World War II. These organizations included the Nazi Party, the SA (Stormtroopers or Brownshirts), and the SS (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squadron). Once the war began, the SS and its police affiliates became especially deadly. Members of the Sicherheitsdienst (the SD), the Gestapo, the Criminal Police (Kripo), and the Order Police played particularly active and deadly roles in the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. Other German institutions involved in carrying out the Final Solution included the German military; the German national railway and healthcare systems; the German civil service and criminal justice systems; and German businesses, insurance companies, and banks. As members of these institutions, countless German soldiers, policemen, civil servants, lawyers, judges, businessmen, engineers, and doctors and nurses chose to implement the regime’s policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans’ participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors. Non-German Governments and Institutions Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, “allies” refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. “Collaborators” refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany’s allies and collaborators included: The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals. German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as the Netherlands. Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily). The terms “allies” and “collaborators” can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations. Individuals across Europe Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust. One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews’ hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals’ motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs. Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews’ homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews’ possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide. Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders. Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder? The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality. The Nazis classified Jews as the priority “enemy.” However, they also targeted other groups as threats to the health, unity, and security of the German people. The first group targeted by the Nazi regime consisted of political opponents. These included officials and members of other political parties and trade union activists. Political opponents also included people simply suspected of opposing or criticizing the Nazi regime. Political enemies were the first to be incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. Jehovah’s Witnesses were also incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. They were arrested because they refused to swear loyalty to the government or serve in the German military. The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans. People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program. The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies), Poles (especially the Polish intelligentsia and elites), Soviet officials, and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis perpetrated mass murder against these groups. How did the Holocaust end? Defeat of Nazi Germany, 1942-1945 Map Defeat of Nazi Germany, 1942-1945(Map) Beginning in 1938, the Nazis increased their territorial control outside of Germany. By 1942, three years into World War II, Nazi Germany reached the peak of its expansion. At the height of its power, Germany had incorporated, seized, or occupied most of the continent. However, also in 1942, the Allied Powers started to systematically bomb Germany. They would continue to do so until Germany's surrender in 1945, weakening the war effort and demolishing cities. Slowly, the Allied Powers began pushing Germany back towards prewar boundaries. From 1942 to 1943, Nazi Germany suffered battle and territory losses in the Soviet Union and North Africa. With the Soviets on the offensive, German troops were pushed westward, gradually losing control of the Eastern Front. In July 1943, the Allied Powers landed in Italy, pushing German troops north. Rome was liberated in June, 1944. That same month, other Allied divisions landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, pushing German troops east. By the end of 1944, the Allies had liberated a majority of Axis territories occupied during the war. In early 1945, Allied troops entered Germany. By mid-April, the Soviets had encircled the German capital of Berlin. On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler killed himself. The German armed forces surrendered unconditionally in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945, bringing an end World War II in Europe. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum The Holocaust ended in May 1945 when the major Allied Powers (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives, they overran concentration camps. There they liberated the surviving prisoners, many of whom were Jews. The Allies also encountered and liberated the survivors of so-called death marches. These forced marches consisted of groups of Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp inmates who had been evacuated on foot from camps under SS guard. But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings. How did some Jews survive the Holocaust? Despite Nazi Germany’s efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck. Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union. Survival in German-Controlled Europe A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements. Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers. Aftermath Displaced persons wait next to their suitcases and bundles, place uncertain, ca. Photo Displaced persons wait(Photo) Displaced persons wait next to their suitcases and bundles, place uncertain, ca. 1947. Credits: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Robert L. Kaplan While the Holocaust ended with the war, the legacy of terror and genocide did not. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others were dead. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators had devastated or completely destroyed thousands of Jewish communities across Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of postwar violence and antisemitism. In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps. There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible. These important efforts remain ongoing.**** The Jewish National Fund (JNF; Hebrew: קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael; previously הפאנד הלאומי, Ha Fund HaLeumi) is a non-profit organization[2][3] founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, subsequently Israel and the Palestinian territories) for Jewish settlement.[4] By 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel.[5] Since its inception, the JNF has planted over 240 million trees in Israel. It has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) of land and established more than 1,000 parks.[6] In 2002, the JNF was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State of Israel.[7][8] Name The name Keren Kayemet comes from the Mishnah. Tractate Peah (1:1) lists the types of good deeds whose rewards are enjoyed in this world, while the principal merit will be in the world to come: hakeren kayemet lo l'olam haba.[9] History JNF postage stamp, c. 1915 The idea of a national land purchasing fund was first presented at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 by Hermann Schapira, a Lithuanian-Jewish professor of mathematics.[10] The fund, named Keren Hakayemet (later known in English as the "Jewish National Fund") was formally established at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901.[11][12] In its early years, the organization was headed by the Jewish industrialist Johann Kremenezky.[13] Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee. In 1909, the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. The establishment of the "Olive Tree Fund" marked the beginning of Diaspora support of afforestation efforts. The JNF collection box or "blue box" (known in Yiddish as a pushke) has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the Diaspora. In the period between the two world wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world.[14] From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money. For a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel.[15] Ottoman era The first parcel of land, 200 dunams (0.20 km2) east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1903. It became an olive grove.[16] In 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres (100 km²), rising to 50,000 acres (200 km²) by 1927. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km²) of land housing 108 Jewish communities.[17] British Mandate JNF head office in Jerusalem under construction 1938 JNF staff Jerusalem 1940 JNF publicity in 1945 In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region,[18] or a bit less than 4% of the land in what was then known as the British Mandate of Palestine.[19] By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of 936,000 dunams (936 km2; 361 sq mi) of land;[20] another 800,000 dunams (800 km2; 310 sq mi) had been acquired by other Jewish organizations or individuals.[21] Most of the JNF's activities during the Mandatory period were closely associated with Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department. From the beginning, JNF's policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it. In its charter, the JNF states: "Since the first land purchase in Eretz Israel in the early 1900s for and on behalf of the Jewish People, JNF has served as the Jewish People's trustee of the land, initiating and charting development work to enable Jewish settlement from the border in the north to the edge of the desert and Arava in the south."[citation needed] State of Israel Planting trees in the Gilboa mountains, c.1960 After Israel's establishment in 1948, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF. On January 27, 1949, 1,000 km² of land (from a total of about 3,500 km²) was sold to the JNF for the price of IL11 million. Another 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF in October 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised but Israeli legislation has generally supported the JNF's land claims.[22][23][24] In 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company under the name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael (JNF-KKL). In 1960, administration of the land held by the JNF-KKL, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency, the Israel Land Administration (ILA). The ILA was then responsible for managing some 93% of the land of Israel.[25] All the land managed by the ILA was defined as Israel lands; it included both land owned by the government (about 80%) and land owned by the JNF-KKL (about 13%).[26] The JNF-KKL received the right to nominate 10 of the 22 directors of the ILA, lending it significant leverage within that state body. After concentrating on the centre and northern part of the young state, the JNF-KKL started supporting Jewish settlements around the Negev border from around 1965. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the JNF-KKL started work in the newly occupied Palestinian territories as well.. EBAY6394 / 219
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