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What
is the Holocaust?
The
Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million
Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. In 1933
approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries
of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war.
By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been
killed. The European Jews were the primary victims of the
Holocaust. But Jews were not the only group singled out
for persecution by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As many as
one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or
physically disabled persons, and more than three million
Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats,
Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish
intelligentsia and other undesirables were also
victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the
Nazis. How many children were murdered during the Holocaust? The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe. How did the Nazis carry our their policy of
genocide? What was Auschwitz-Birkenau? Auschwitz-Birkenau became the killing centre where the largest numbers of European Jews were killed. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941 of 850 malnourished and ill prisoners, mass murder became a daily routine. By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B began at Auschwitz, where extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running as high as three million persons eventually killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning.
Sources: www.auschwitz.dk |
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