Definition
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the central target of an ideology that defined them as a racial enemy to be eliminated entirely.
The Nazi regime also murdered millions of other people: Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Slavic civilians, political opponents, gay men, and others. The genocide was not a byproduct of war but a planned program of mass killing.
Why it matters
How it works
After the Nazis took power in 1933, German law stripped Jews of citizenship, property, and livelihoods. With the outbreak of war, Jews across occupied Europe were confined to ghettos under conditions of starvation and disease. From 1941, mobile killing units carried out mass shootings across the occupied Soviet territories.
The regime then built dedicated extermination camps where victims were murdered in gas chambers immediately on arrival. The killing continued until Allied forces liberated the camps in 1944 and 1945, revealing the full scale of the crime to the world.