The Holocaust

Religious Studies: KS3, topic 1.2.32

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

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'.

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 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.

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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