The Holocaust
The Holocaust (Shoah) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In Germany, the process began with legal discrimination against Jews following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews. The escalation of persecution was marked by Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), a nationwide pogrom in which Jewish businesses, synagogues, and homes were destroyed, dozens killed, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps. Following the invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union, mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) conducted mass shootings of Jews in eastern territories. The Wannsee Conference in January 1942 coordinated the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," which formalized the plan for the systematic murder of all European Jews. A network of extermination camps was established, primarily in occupied Poland, where Jews and other victims were murdered in gas chambers, with Auschwitz-Birkenau becoming the largest killing center. By the war's end, approximately two-thirds of European Jews had been murdered, along with millions of Roma, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, disabled people, homosexuals, and political opponents. The Holocaust remains a central trauma in German historical consciousness and a fundamental moral reference point, shaping Germany's postwar political culture, memory practices, and approach to questions of human rights, genocide, and antisemitism.
Timeline and Overview
The Holocaust (Shoah) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In Germany, the process began with legal discrimination against Jews following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews. The escalation of persecution was marked by Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), a nationwide pogrom in which Jewish businesses, synagogues, and homes were destroyed, dozens killed, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps. Following the invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union, mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) conducted mass shootings of Jews in eastern territories. The Wannsee Conference in January 1942 coordinated the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," which formalized the plan for the systematic murder of all European Jews. A network of extermination camps was established, primarily in occupied Poland, where Jews and other victims were murdered in gas chambers, with Auschwitz-Birkenau becoming the largest killing center. By the war's end, approximately two-thirds of European Jews had been murdered, along with millions of Roma, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, disabled people, homosexuals, and political opponents. The Holocaust remains a central trauma in German historical consciousness and a fundamental moral reference point, shaping Germany's postwar political culture, memory practices, and approach to questions of human rights, genocide, and antisemitism.