Holocaust how long did it last

In the last months of the war, thousands of Jews and other prisoners died during the 'death marches' after the Germans had evacuated the concentration camps to prevent the prisoners from falling into the hands of the Allied troops.

Even after liberation, people still died of malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion. The Nazis did not just kill Jews during the war.

Their political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, the handicapped, homosexuals, Slavs, and Roma and Sinti were also murdered on a large scale. Nevertheless, the murder of the European Jews takes a special place. Numerically speaking, they were the largest group of victims. Moreover, the Nazis set out to exterminate the entire Jewish people. The only other group they intended to wipe out as a whole were the Roma and Sinti, although the Nazis were slightly less fanatical in their persecution.

They murdered The Roma and Sinti call this massacre porajmos , 'the devouring'. The main perpetrators of the Holocaust were the Nazis who planned and carried out the mass murder. Still, they could never have done this without the support and help of millions of Germans and others.

Virtually all government agencies were complicit to some extent. There was little protest from the population, although it should be noted that the Third Reich was a dictatorship without free speech.

The allies of Nazi Germany were often guilty of killing Jews themselves or of deporting them to Germany. In some cases, they succumbed to German pressure, in others, they did not deport their own citizens, but only Jews with foreign passports. Throughout the occupied territories, there were numerous collaborators, who reported Jews to the Germans or helped the Germans to find Jews in hiding. Government agencies often followed the orders of the Germans and cooperated in the arrest and deportation of Jews.

Sometimes they did so in order to prevent worse from happening, but their actions often had fatal consequences for the Jews. In Eastern Europe, some people sided with the Germans to join them in the fight against the hated Soviet regime. The Germans sometimes recruited personnel for the extermination camps among Soviet prisoners of war, for whom this was their only chance to escape death. People collaborated with the Germans for a variety of reasons.

Antisemitic ideas often played a role, but not always. Some people had personal scores to settle. Others reported Jews out of greed, hoping that they would be able to seize their possessions. Fear of the Germans sometimes kept people from helping the Jews.

It is difficult to determine how many people knew that the Jews were being murdered during the war. Few will have realised the full extent of the Nazi crimes.

Yet in many cases, the population was aware of what was going on, at least to some extent. In Germany, the plan to murder all Jews was officially a secret, but due to the enormous number of people involved, rumours started circulating before long. Soldiers stationed in the east wrote about the executions in their letters home and took photographs. Many others were involved in processing the Jewish possessions that were left behind after the deportations.

The Germans did not know as much about the extermination camps. Their existence was deliberately kept secret from the outside world. Still, the local population near places of execution, ghettos, and camps knew what was happening. Besides, the Nazi crimes were so inconceivable that few could believe that the reports were not exaggerated.

Only when the Allies liberated the concentration and extermination camps did the world fully realise the extent of the crime that had taken place. Holocaust or Shoah? Causes of the Holocaust The Holocaust has a number of causes. Expelling the Jews from Germany Between and , the Nazis made life in Germany increasingly impossible for the Jews.

The decision to resort to genocide Historians disagree about the moment when Hitler decided that all European Jews should be killed. Aktion Reinhard: The first extermination camps In late , the Nazis began preparing for the murder of more than two million Jews living in the General Government, the occupied part of Poland. Deportations from all over Europe to Auschwitz In the middle of , the Germans began deporting Jews from the occupied territories in Western Europe.

The other victims of the Nazis The Nazis did not just kill Jews during the war. Who were the perpetrators? Who knew about the Holocaust? Beck , 6e druk. Historians estimate that between June and May , these roaming death squads killed over 1 million Jews. Industrial-scale murder of Jews, known as the Final Solution, was approved by the senior Nazi leadership on January 20, at the Wannsee Conference, held just outside Berlin.

At the meeting, called by Heydrich, he presented the plan to transport Jews from Eastern and Western Europe to extermination camps located in Poland. While the fall of the Nazi regime and its surrender on May 8, is usually the date given as the end of the Holocaust — it did not mark the end of organized killings of Jews in Europe.

Hundreds of Jews were killed across Poland by Polish locals after the war had ended. In the most of infamous of these events, on July 4, , over 40 Jews were killed in the Polish city of Kielce, in a massacre incited by Polish communist authorities with elements among the local population participating.

This article was originally published in February Haaretz Jan. Updated: Jan. Kristallnacht Night of Broken Glass : anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; synagogues destroyed; 7, Jewish shops looted; 30, male Jews sent to concentration camps Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen. One billion Marks fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht. Hitler in Reichstag speech: "if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung extermination of European Jews".

Chelmno Kulmhof extermination camp begins operations: , Jews, 20, Poles and Czechs murdered by April Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers; Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin. Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70, inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June.