The Nazis › Persecution and the Holocaust
Persecution and the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators. It was part of a wider campaign of persecution against other groups.
A note before you read
This page describes mass murder in factual terms. It names facts and dates that are well established and avoids graphic detail. For personal testimony, see the museums and organisations on remembrance and learning.
Step by step: exclusion
The persecution of Jews began in 1933 and escalated in stages. On 1 April 1933 Nazi Party members organised a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Laws soon pushed Jews out of public jobs and professions. On 15 September 1935 the regime announced the Nuremberg Race Laws. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Reich Citizenship Law limited citizenship to people "of German or related blood", which stripped Jews of full citizenship and political rights, and a second law banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and other Germans. The laws defined who counted as Jewish in racial terms, and were later applied to Roma and Black people too. They made Jews legally different from their neighbours and were the foundation for later anti-Jewish measures.
On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht or the "Night of Broken Glass", synagogues were burned, Jewish homes and shops were attacked and thousands of Jewish men were arrested. Many Jews tried to leave Germany, but strict immigration rules in many countries, including the loss of property and money, made escape hard.
War and the move to mass murder
After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, millions of Jews came under German control. Many were forced into overcrowded ghettos where hunger and disease killed large numbers. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing squads began murdering Jews in Soviet territory, often shooting entire communities.
On 20 January 1942, senior Nazi officials met at a villa at Wannsee, near Berlin. Reinhard Heydrich, deputy to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, convened the meeting to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe". The conference formally revealed the plan for the genocide of European Jews to non-SS officials, informed them that the SS would carry out the killing programme and coordinated the transport of Jews from German-occupied Europe to killing centres in occupied Poland. No attendee objected. The conference did not start the killing, since it was already under way.
The camps
The Nazi system included concentration camps, forced-labour camps, ghettos and killing centres. Concentration camps began in 1933 as places of detention for political opponents, and later held many other groups. The killing centres in occupied Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, were built to murder people on a vast scale. Millions were deported by train from across Europe. Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet forces on 27 January 1945, which is why Holocaust Memorial Day is held on that date.
Who were the victims?
Six million Jews were murdered. The regime also persecuted and killed millions of other people, including Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities (the "euthanasia" killings), Soviet prisoners of war, Polish civilians, political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses and gay men. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust remembers the six million Jews and the millions of others killed under Nazi persecution. The experiences of each group differ, and historians are careful to describe them separately.
Perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders
The Holocaust was not carried out by a handful of leaders. It needed bureaucrats, police, soldiers, railway workers and local collaborators across Europe. Others watched and did nothing, and a minority helped or hid Jews at great risk. See resistance and rescue.
The end of the war and aftermath
As Allied forces advanced in 1945 they found camps, mass graves and starving survivors. Many survivors had lost their whole families and communities. Some of them rebuilt their lives in Britain. Leaders of the regime were put on trial: see the Nuremberg trials. The evidence for all of this is overwhelming; see why Holocaust denial is false.
Frequently asked questions
What were the Nuremberg Race Laws?
They were two laws announced on 15 September 1935 that took citizenship rights away from Jews and banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and other Germans.
What was the Wannsee Conference?
It was a meeting on 20 January 1942 at which senior Nazi officials were told of the plan for the genocide of European Jews and its coordination. It did not start the killings, which were already under way.
Who else did the Nazis persecute?
Millions of other people, including Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish civilians, political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses and gay men.