The Holocaust is the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. In a broader sense, the Holocaust is the mass destruction of representatives of social and ethnic groups objectionable to the Third Reich.
In Russian, when the word "single" is written with a small letter, it means the destruction or genocide of any nation. If the word "Holocaust" is spelled with a capital letter, it refers exclusively to the events of the Second World War.
Chronology of events
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, which became one of the main prerequisites for the events of the Holocaust. Already on September 10 of the same year, Jews were forbidden to participate in the cultural life of the country. On October 5, 1938, a law was passed, according to which, in the passports of Jews, the mark "J" was put - an abbreviation for the German jude, that is, Jew.
In November 1938, more than 1,400 synagogues were destroyed and tens of thousands of German Jews were sent to concentration camps. A year later, in September 1939, a decree was issued on the imprisonment of Polish Jews in a ghetto, and a month later they were obliged to wear a patch with the emblem of the Star of David on their sleeves.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, mass exterminations of Soviet Jews began in the occupied territories, and ghettos were opened throughout the German-controlled Soviet territory.
In March 1942, gas chambers began their work in the German camp of Auschwitz, where, according to the estimates of the French historian Georges Weller, about 1 million 100 thousand Jews were exterminated. Over the next two years, millions of Jews were exterminated in concentration camps and ghettos throughout Europe.
On April 19, 1942, the first Jewish uprising took place. It happened in the Warsaw ghetto. During the year, uprisings took place in several more camps.
In the first half of 1944, during the liberation of the occupied territories by the Allies, the camps of Majdanek and Transinsria were destroyed - the second and third camps in terms of the number of victims after Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz camp was liberated and destroyed.
The surrender of Germany on May 8 and 9, 1945, marked the end of the Holocaust and the beginning of judicial investigations of fascists and war criminals.
Results of the tragedy
In the course of the Holocaust, a total of about 6 million Jews were exterminated, of which only 4 million were identified. At that time, this accounted for one third of the world's Jewish population.
The greatest losses were suffered by Polish Jews. Of the 3 million 350 thousand Jews who lived in Poland before the war, only 350 thousand survived. 1.2 million Jews living in the Soviet Union were exterminated, 350 thousand Hungarian, French and Romanian Jews each.
