The Holocaust

An aerial photograph of part of the Auschwitz- Birkenau camp complex, taken August 25, 1944. National Archives and Records Administration, 263-AUSCHWITZ-19(06.)
A survivor stokes smoldering human remains in a crematorium oven that is still lit. Dachau, Germany, April 29-May 1, 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Merle Spiegel

Under the cover of the Second World War, the Nazis sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe. This event is called “the Holocaust”.

Conditions in Germany after the First World War saw the rise of a new right-wing group, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist or Nazi party. In 1933, Hitler took control of Germany. The Nazis founded their state on the idea that there was a “Master Race”, superior to all others. Antisemitism – hatred of Jews – was central to their worldview. They built on a 2,000-year-old tradition of antisemitism that was already very widespread in Europe.

German Jews became outcasts. They lost their German citizenship, were barred from public service and most professions, and denied state social security. As Nazi persecution intensified, Jews became increasingly desperate to leave Germany but emigrating was a major step, and very difficult.

On 1 September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The two million Polish Jews now under Nazi control were subjected to random violence and forced into ghettos, where thousands died of hunger and disease. As Germany conquered more European countries, more Jews experienced Nazi brutality. With the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Nazi death squads began murdering Jews in mass shootings. Six months later, the first of six death camps was set up in Nazi-occupied Poland. In these camps, the largest of which was Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jews were murdered with poison gas.

The Nazis mobilised the entire apparatus of a modern state – including the police, army and private industry – to carry out what they called ‘the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe”. They used the railway system to transport Jews from across Europe to their deaths. Those Jews not killed immediately were worked to death in a vast network of concentration camps which stretched right across German occupied territory. 

The mass murder of Jews ended only with Germany’s defeat by the Allies in May, 1945. By then, the Nazis and their collaborators had murdered two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population: six million people and among them, 1.5 million children.

Corpses lie in one of the open railcars of the Dachau death train. The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty cars containing the bodies of between two and three thousand prisoners transported to Dachau in the last days of the war. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of unknown source
Survivors move around between rows of barracks in the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp. Dachau, Germany, May 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Merle Spiegel
Two survivors prepare food outside the barracks. The man on the right, presumably, is Jean (Johnny) Voste, born in Belgian Congo, who was the only black prisoner in Dachau. Dachau, Germany, May 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Merle Spiegel
The charred corpse of a prisoner killed by the SS in a barn just outside of Gardelegen. Gardelegen, Germany, April 16, 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Thomas Hardy
Primary Image: Prisoners in barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp. (National Archives and Records Administration, 208-AA-206K-31.)
An aerial View of a section of the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp as seen through the barbed-wire fence. Dachau, Germany, May 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Merle Spiegelphotograph of part of the Auschwitz- Birkenau camp complex, taken August 25, 1944. National Archives and Records Administration, 263-AUSCHWITZ-19(06.)
While on a tour of the newly liberated concentration camp, General Dwight Eisenhower and other highranking US Army officers view the bodies of prisoners who were killed during the evacuation of Ohrdruf. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
German civilians remove the bodies of prisoners killed in the Nordhausen concentration camp and lay them out in long rows outside the central barracks (Boelke Kaserne). Nordhausen, Germany, April 12, 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
While on an inspection tour of the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp, American soldiers view the charred remains of prisoners burned upon a section of railroad track during the evacuation of the camp. Ohrdruf, Germany, April 4-15, 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
During an official tour of the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp, an Austrian Jewish survivor describes to General Dwight Eisenhower and the members of his entourage the use of the gallows in the camp. Ohrdruf, Germany, April 12, 1945. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
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