What is the Holocaust?
The Holocaust is what is known as a genocide. A genocide is the mass murdering of a specific group of people who have a characteristic in common. In the case of the Holocaust in the 1940s, the Holocaust was the systematic murder of over 6 million persecuted Jewish people, as well as members of other minority groups. The Nazi Party began to round up Jewish people, having them register with the government as Jewish. Jewish people were easily identifiable because they were forced to wear a star of David, a symbol of the Jewish faith, on their clothing. The Jewish people were then taken by train to concentration camps where they were executed.
Who was responsible for the Holocaust?
The Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich were responsible for the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler was known as anti-Semitic, which means he was aggressive towards and disliked Jewish people. He felt that Jews were an inferior race and a threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to be under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.
Why did the Holocaust happen?
There is much debate about exactly why the Holocaust happened. Many people have delved into Adolf Hitler's past to look for the cause of his hatred of Jewish people. Watch the video to hear some of the theories about why Adolf Hitler held these hateful beliefs:
What was the outcome of the Holocaust?
A few month before V-E Day (Victory in the European Theater), Allied troops who were taking back land that was taken by Germany began to liberate the concentration camps and free the remaining victims. Many of the victims who had not been executed in the camps were malnourished and incredibly ill. Many who were liberated died shortly thereafter. By the end of the Holocaust, over 6 million Jewish people and countless other minority groups had died as a result of the concentration camps.