What was The Holocaust?

The holocaust was an important event that took place at the time of the 2nd World War. This blog will go into detail about why exactly it happened but first, to start off this blog, we are going to give a brief introduction to the holocaust.

The word 'holocaust' means destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. However when historians refer to 'the holocaust' they are describing a key event in our history that was the mass murdering or genocide of the Jews. The Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, separated Jews from their communities and murdered them.

It all began with discrimination. The Jews living in Germany were persecuted and this means they were treated especially badly due to their religion. The aim of the Nazis was to murder the Jews and destroy their culture to try and make Germany a 'pure nation'. The Nazis took over many other countries in Europe and many Jews were at risk. In 1941, there were 11 million Jews living in Europe but by 1945, around 6 million Jews had been murdered. 1 1/2 of these were children.

The Jews were the main target but other people were killed too. Some other targets were the Roma (gypsies), disabled people, homosexuals, Hitler's political opponents, soviet prisoners of war and Jehovah's witnesses (people who refused military service on religious grounds). Hitler basically killed anyone he 'didn't like'.

The Nazis were supported and assisted by many others across Europe so they are not completely to blame and also, many people stood by while these murders happened.

So that was a brief introduction to the holocaust and hopefully now you will explore this site further and find out more about why this happened, who was involved and what happened in further detail.

Please watch this video for a summary of the holocaust. For some reason we have had a problem with the video so if you open it into full screen, it goes blurry. For a clearer video, please watch it in the size it already is.