What is the Holocaust?

Studying the historical literature of the period of the Second World War, it is often possible to encounter such a word as the "holocaust". Where does this concept come from? What is the Holocaust? We will try to find an answer to these and other questions.

What is the Holocaust?

This word is of Greek origin and means "burnt offering". This term is used to describe the events of 1933-45, related to the persecution and mass extermination of the Jewish people by the Nazis. Documentary sources claim that during this period more than six million people died.

The Holocaust. History

The policy of anti-Semitism was secretly held in Western European states until the fifteenth century. Then, as a result of economic, religious and other contradictions, the Jewish nation was pushed into Eastern Europe. However, here the persecution did not cease. And even the Christian church advocated the persecution of the Jews.

In the twentieth century, the role of the initiator and organizer of the policy of anti-Semitism is assumed by Germany. Since that time and for twelve years, the persecution of Jews has acquired the character of a brutal mass persecution and merciless extermination. These measures were carried out in accordance with the policy of Hitler's Nazism.

As early as 1924, Adolf Hitler wrote his famous book entitled "My Struggle", in which he substantiates the "system" of the extermination of the Jews. Two years after he came to power, he creates a number of anti-Jewish laws. These regulations severely limited the activities of Jews in all spheres of life, depriving them of their citizenship and prohibiting marriages with Germans.

In 1938, on the orders of Adolf Hitler, a pogrom of the Jewish population was organized, which in the people was called the "Crystal Night". During its conduct, more than thirty thousand people were sent to the concentration camps.

This event marked the beginning of the cruel German genocide in many European countries.

Hitler's policy towards Jews

To understand what a holocaust is and to estimate its scale reliably, it is possible to get acquainted with the basic principles of Nazi ideology. Hitler believed that the German race needed the best living conditions. This is possible only due to the deprivation of property of Jews and the subordination of the territories of other peoples, which, because of uselessness, are subsequently subject to extermination. For these purposes, special concentration camps of death were established by the Hitlerite militia, on the territories captured by them . To destroy the Jewish people, the Nazis used gas chambers and cars.

Holocaust Victims

More than two million Jews died in the territory of Russia as a result of mass executions. Approximately five hundred thousand people died in working camps and ghettos from malnutrition, disease and ill-treatment.

Combating anti-Semitism

In 1942, the Jewish Committee issued an address in which he called on the Jews of the whole world to fight actively against German fascism. The appeal caused an immediate effect. Former prisoners of the German invaders established regular armies, partisan detachments, and in the concentration camps - resistance groups. Fighting on all fronts, the Jews waged an uncompromising struggle against the Nazis. Perhaps the most heroic and at the same time tragic event was the uprising that occurred in the Warsaw ghetto in 1944, when more than ten thousand people were killed. For many of them, death in the struggle was a kind of spiritual resistance and courage.

In 1945, after the end of the Second World War, the Nuremberg Court, on the initiative of the world's political elite, accused the leaders of the fascist occupiers of massacres. Thus ended the period of mass persecution of Jews.

That's what a holocaust is. For the entire Jewish population this word will always be answered with an intolerable pain in one's soul.