What was the Holocaust?

In the early years of the Nazi regime, the German National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents indefinitely, without any judicial or administrative review.

Following Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, special killing units carried out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials behind German lines. In Nazi-occupied territory, including the Soviet Union and Poland, German SS police and military units murdered more than 2 million Jewish men, women and children, and hundreds of thousands of other people, without regard for age or gender.

Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported nearly three million Jews from Germany and its occupied territories, and from the countries of some of its Axis allies, to killing centers, and murdered them using gassing facilities constructed for this purpose.

In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at more than nine million. By 1945, the Nazi Germans and their collaborators had killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the “Final Solution”, the Nazi policy to annihilate the Jews of Europe.

Source: Education about the Holocaust and preventing genocide: A Policy Guide (UNESCO)

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The causes and true impact of the Holocaust are difficult to understand. Reliable information about the Holocaust is critical to ensuring that the mistakes of the past are never repeated. That is why the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), established Aboutholocaust.org, with the goal of providing young people with essential information about the history of the Holocaust and its legacy.

This online tool includes easy to read facts about the Holocaust and survivor testimonies, reviewed by leading experts in the field of Holocaust studies, designed to address gaps in knowledge and to counter the misinformation that circulates across social media and other internet forums.

What was the Nazi Party?

Who perpetrated the Holocaust?

Who was Adolf Hitler?

What were ghettos?

What were the Nuremberg Laws?

Were Jews the only victims of Nazi persecution?

When and how did the international community learn about the Holocaust?

Did any governments attempt to save Jews from persecution before the outbreak of World War II?

Were the Nazis the only antisemites in pre-war Europe?

What was the “Final Solution”?

Visit www.AboutHolocaust.org to learn about these topics and much more.