The Holocaust

In 1933, it is estimated that the Jewish population of

Europe stood at around 11 million. By the end of the

war in 1945, it is estimated that more than six million

Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis. To put this

into perspective, more than half of all European Jews

were killed. This systematic, government-endorsed

persecution and murder of Jews took place throughout

the Nazi-occupied territories under the command of

Adolf Hitler. It is among the most brutal and destructive

policies of the 20th century, and is referred to as the

Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of German military

and civilian personnel were involved in the mass

murder. Millions more collaborated or accepted these

events without protest. The word ‘Holocaust’ is of Greek

origin and means ‘sacriﬁced by ﬁre’ or ‘burnt’. Out of

respect for the dead, Jewish communities today use the

Hebrew word Shoah instead, meaning ‘catastrophe’.

Beginnings of the Holocaust

The origins of the Holocaust can be traced back further

than Hitler’s lifetime. Antisemitism has its origins in

the ancient world, and was rife throughout Europe in

the Middle Ages.

In the 1880s, the eugenics movement became

popular. Eugenics, a practice that aimed to ‘improve’ the human gene pool by controlling the types of

people giving birth to children, was taught as a

subject at many universities. For a time, eugenics was

supported by people like Winston Churchill, and was

government policy in countries such as the United

States. By the 1930s the popularity of the eugenics

movement was declining, but the Nazi Party’s policies

were heavily inﬂuenced by its ideas.

Hitler outlined the development of his

antisemitism and even some of his proposed policies

towards Jews in his book Mein Kampf. Many of these

beliefs were borrowed from the eugenics movement.

He declared that ‘the personiﬁcation of the devil as

the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of

the Jew’. Mein Kampf also outlined Hitler’s hatred of

communism, and his belief that Germany would have

to expand east to provide Lebensraum (‘living space’)

for ethnic Germans. The seeds of Hitler’s cruel and

murderous policies were present in his ideology at least

a decade before he became Chancellor of Germany

in 1933.

Within months of coming to power, Hitler also

introduced a law that allowed the compulsory

sterilisation of people with mental or physical

disabilities. In other words, anyone who was disabled

(a broad deﬁnition of ‘disabled’ was used, ranging

from schizophrenia, to deafness, to alcoholism) could

be legally forced to have an operation to ensure they

could not have children. More than 400 000 people

were sterilised and around 5000 died as a result of these

operations. Another 70 000 were killed under a related

euthanasia program.

Antisemitism and eugenics eventually combined in

Germany’s racial policies. As well as violence against

Jews and boycotts of Jewish businesses,

the government refused to grant German citizenship

to Jews and sought to remove all Jews from the

government, the legal professions and universities. Laws

limited the number of Jewish students allowed in public

schools, banned Jews from many public places, expelled

Jewish ofﬁcers from the army, and transferred ownership

of many Jewish businesses to non-Jewish Germans. As Hitler’s policies began to take hold, many Jews

(and Germans) refused to believe the reality of what was

taking place around them. Some, including the famous

scientist Albert Einstein, left Germany. Others believed

that they would be protected because they were German

citizens. By the time the reality dawned, they had been

stripped of their citizenship and, often, the avenues of

escape had been closed to them.

In 1938 there was a wave of violence directed

against Jewish synagogues, businesses and houses

across Germany. It was known as Kristallnacht or the

‘Night of Broken Glass’. While there is no doubt that

this was organised by the Nazis, Hitler claimed that it

was a spontaneous attack by German people, and that

it showed the depth of anti-Jewish feeling. The Nazi

regime was widely criticised in the international press

as a result of Kristallnacht. Spread of antisemitism and the

formation of ghettos

Soon after the invasion of Poland in 1939, ghettos were

set up in Nazi-occupied territories, such as Poland,

Hungary and the Soviet Union. Ghettos were small

areas of larger cities that were used to isolate Jews

from the rest of the population. They were bricked

off or encircled with barbed wire to stop people from

escaping. Over the course of the war, many Jewish

people were rounded up and forced to leave their homes and move into ghettos. One of the largest ghettos

was in Warsaw, Nazi-occupied Poland (see Source 5).

Conditions inside the ghetto were extremely brutal.

It was very crowded and there was often no running

water, or toilet facilities. Jews were often not allowed

to leave the ghetto and had to depend on the few

rations provided by the Nazis. One survivor described

the Warsaw ghetto as ‘a prison without a roof’.

Approximately 800 000 Jews died in the ghettos from

malnutrition, disease and forced labour. Others were

murdered outright by shooting.

Although the principal victims of the Holocaust

were European Jews, Nazi policies also targeted other

segments of society, such as Sinta and Romani peoples

(often referred to as Gypsies) as well as homosexuals

and people with physical or intellectual disabilities.

Between 200 000 and 500 000 Sinta and Romani

peoples alone were killed by the Nazis. These criminal

actions were later labelled genocide – the deliberate

attempt to wipe out a religious, racial or ethnic group.

Nazi occupation policies, particularly in Eastern and

Central Europe, were also brutal. In Poland and the

Soviet Union, for instance, they resulted in the deaths

of millions of civilians. Concentration camps

In addition to the formation of ghettos in large cities

to conﬁne Jews and other ‘undesirables’, the Nazi

government used existing concentration camps in

Germany and built many new camps throughout

the occupied territories, mostly in Poland. The exact

number of concentration camps is not known; however,

it is generally accepted that there were between 2000

and 8000 camps.

The camps varied in character. Some were forced

labour camps where inmates were compelled to do hard

physical labour such as mining and road building under

harsh conditions (see Source 6). Others were prisoner

of war camps where Allied soldiers were held and often

tortured in order to reveal secret information. Still

others functioned as extermination camps designed for

the sole purpose of murdering. Many camps, however,

served a combination of these functions. The best

known and largest of these camps was Auschwitz–

Birkenau, where inmates considered unsuitable for

forced labour were gassed and their bodies burnt in

crematoria (giant ovens – see Source 7). More than one

million Jews alone were murdered at Auschwitz. Mass shootings

With the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941,

Nazi policy towards the Jews began to move into its

most extreme phase. Between the start of the invasion

and early 1943, roughly 1.6 million eastern European

Jews were executed in mass killing campaigns that were

conducted by members of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads). Local collaborators, the SS (Hitler’s elite

forces) and some members of the Wehrmacht (German

armed forces) also participated in this extermination. The

process generally involved rounding up the members of

a local Jewish community and executing them in an area

close to their homes. On 29–30 September 1941 at Babi

Yar, near the city of Kiev, 33 771 Jews were executed. This

phase of the Holocaust was the most public, and rumours

of executions began to spread in the occupied areas and

in Germany itself. The ‘Final Solution’ In January 1942, at a meeting in the city of Wannsee

near Berlin, leading Nazi ofﬁcials identiﬁed a process

to achieve a ‘ﬁnal solution to the Jewish question’. The

aim was to eliminate the estimated 11 million European

Jews. This ‘Final Solution’ combined forced deportation

and transportation of Jews to labour camps before

extermination.

Historians generally agree that around 3 million

Jews were killed in concentration and extermination

camps, while another 3 million died in other violent

or oppressive circumstances outside the camps. All

6 million deaths were a result of Nazi extermination

policies. Many other non-Jewish inmates died of

maltreatment, disease and starvation.

The Holocaust’s legacy

More than 6 million of Europe’s 11

million Jews were killed in a deliberate

campaign of extermination during the

Holocaust. Some survivors endured slave

labour in the various camps. Many others

hid or were protected by sympathetic

non-Jews. There were also those who

took up arms against the Nazis, such as

the Jewish Combat Organisation whose

members led uprisings in some of the

major ghettos.

After the war, many European Jews

migrated to other countries, including

Australia, where they have established

vibrant new communities. After enduring

the horrors of the Holocaust, many Jews

wished to join their fellow Jews who were

already living in their ancient homeland.

So, in November 1947, the United

Nations endorsed the establishment of an

independent Jewish state in what became

known as Israel (see Topic 9.14). Israel

declared its independence in May 1948.

The horrors of the mass murders

and other atrocities committed by the

Nazis shocked people all around the

world. After World War II, the nations

of the world were determined to prevent

such grave crimes from ever happening

again or, at least, ensuring that people

committing such crimes would not

go unpunished. The facts and lessons

of these events are commemorated in

Holocaust museums that have been

established in many countries, while

memoirs and ﬁlms communicate the

Jewish experience of the Shoah to the

world. New international treaties on

human rights, the humane treatment

of civilians in times of war, sanctuary

for refugees and the elimination of

racial discrimination have come into

effect since the events of the Holocaust.

These treaties, such as the Declaration of

Human Rights, recognise the inherent

dignity and equal and inalienable rights

of all members of the human race as the

foundation of freedom, justice and peace

in the world.

In 1933, Approximately 11 million Jews in Europe and by 1945, over six million Jews died during the Holocaust, a systematic persecution led by Adolf Hitler.

Beginnings of the Holocaust:

Antisemitism dates back to the ancient world and Middle Ages.
1880s: Rise of eugenics, influencing Nazi policies.
Hitler's Mein Kampf outlined antisemitism and expansionist goals.
Post-1933: Compulsory sterilization of disabled individuals (over 400,000 sterilizations, 5,000 deaths), followed by euthanasia programs (70,000 deaths).
Jews were stripped of citizenship and removed from public life and Jewish businesses transferred.

Spread of antisemitism and the formation of ghettos:

Post-1939: Ghettos set up in Nazi-occupied territories to isolate Jews.
Conditions were brutal (crowding, lack of facilities, malnutrition).
Approximately 800,000 Jews died in ghettos.
Other groups such as Sinta and Romani peoples, homosexuals, and people with disabilities were also targeted.

Concentration camps:

2000-8000 camps were established, varying from forced labor to prisoner of war to extermination camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau: Over one million Jews were murdered.

Mass shootings:

Post-June 1941: Einsatzgruppen executed approximately 1.6 million eastern European Jews by early 1943.
Babi Yar: 33,771 Jews executed on September 29–30, 1941.

The ‘Final Solution’:

January 1942: Nazi officials planned the 'Final Solution' to eliminate approximately 11 million European Jews.
Approximately 3 million Jews killed in camps and 3 million more died violently outside camps.

The Holocaust’s legacy:

Over 6 million European Jews were killed.
Post-war: Jewish migration, including to Australia, and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Holocaust