During WWII, in the pursuit of land and empire, the Nazis had forcefully removed millions Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, socialists, people with disabilities and others targeted as "undesirables." The other reason was racially motivated. The Nazis believed in racial superiority. One of their main goals was to eliminate those they did not think were fit. Nazi ideology also blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in the First World War through the creation of historical myths like the “stab in the back” legend, Jews were labeled as threats to the state and the Nazis eventually decided to attempt to eradicate European Jewry.
By the end of World War II, the Nazi regime and its accomplices had physically annihilated millions of people. The Jewish people were the primary target of Hitler's racially motivated genocidal policies. At first, people were rounded up into Ghettoes. Then they were moved into concentration camps were they were forced to work for the German military machine. Lastly, came what they called the Final Solution or the extermination of the Jews and undesirables. The Holocaust, the near extermination of European Jews by Germany, was a human disaster on a scale previously unknown. The murder of European Jews was preceded by a long history of vilification and persecution of Jews known as anti-Semitism. For centuries, Jewish communities had been singled out by Christian societies as a "problem," and by the time the Nazi regime assumed power in 1933, anti-Semitism had contributed significantly to the widespread tolerance for anti-Jewish measures. Marked as outsiders, Jewish people found few defenders in their societies. Nazi determination to destroy the Jewish population and Europeans' passive acceptance of anti-Semitism laid the groundwork for genocide.
By the end of World War II, the Nazi regime and its accomplices had physically annihilated millions of people. The Jewish people were the primary target of Hitler's racially motivated genocidal policies. At first, people were rounded up into Ghettoes. Then they were moved into concentration camps were they were forced to work for the German military machine. Lastly, came what they called the Final Solution or the extermination of the Jews and undesirables. The Holocaust, the near extermination of European Jews by Germany, was a human disaster on a scale previously unknown. The murder of European Jews was preceded by a long history of vilification and persecution of Jews known as anti-Semitism. For centuries, Jewish communities had been singled out by Christian societies as a "problem," and by the time the Nazi regime assumed power in 1933, anti-Semitism had contributed significantly to the widespread tolerance for anti-Jewish measures. Marked as outsiders, Jewish people found few defenders in their societies. Nazi determination to destroy the Jewish population and Europeans' passive acceptance of anti-Semitism laid the groundwork for genocide.
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Images of the Holocaust
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Survivor Testimonies
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