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The Holocaust

The Holocaust was the name for the systemic extermination of Jewish people by the Nazis during WW2.

The meaning of 'Holocaust'

The meaning of 'Holocaust'

  • The word ‘Holocaust’ comes from ancient Greek and means ‘burnt offering’.
  • Even before the Second World War, the word was sometimes used to describe the death of a large group of people, but since 1945, it has been used almost exclusively to describe the murder of the European Jews during the Second World War.
  • Jews also refer to the Holocaust as ‘Shoah’, which is Hebrew for 'catastrophe'.
Scapegoating the Jews

Scapegoating the Jews

  • After WW1 Germany needed to rebuild.
  • Germany's leaders invested money in the military instead of the economy.
  • The country suffered and the leaders blamed Germany’s problems on the Jews.
  • This scapegoating was a repetition of what Jews had experienced over many centuries.
  • Adolf Hitler said the solution was to kill every Jew in Europe and then the world.
The Final Solution

The Final Solution

  • The Nazis had a plan for the extermination and genocide of the Jewish people called "The Final Solution".
  • The Final Solution was a policy that the Nazi Party formulated in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin.
  • When the Nazis carried out the Final Solution, it led to the Holocaust.
  • The Holocaust took the lives of 90% of the Polish-Jewish population and two-thirds of the Jewish European population.
  • The total number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was around six million.
The Concentration Camps

The Concentration Camps

  • Of the 24 concentration camps (besides countless forced work camps), six specific death camps were set up. They were:
    • Auschwitz – 1,500,000 murdered
    • Treblinka – 870,000 murdered
    • Belzec – 600,000 murdered
    • Maidenek – 360,000 murdered
    • Chelmno – 320,000 murdered
    • Sobibor – 250,000 murdered
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Year 7

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Origins of Abrahamic Faith

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Life & Death

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