{"id":3305,"date":"2016-09-18T06:10:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-18T06:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2026-02-16T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:21:24","slug":"holocaust-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/holocaust-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust: A Detailed Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\u00a0Holocaust<\/a>\u00a0is one of the most important events of the 20th century and is perhaps the most significant genocide in human history.\u00a0 A genocide<\/a> is a mass killing of a group of people for ethnic, religious or racial reasons.\u00a0 The term \u2018holocaust\u2019 refers to death by fire in reference to the way that people were executed during the event.\u00a0\u00a0 It unfolded during the reign of\u00a0Adolf Hitler<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Nazi Germany<\/a>\u00a0and the major events of\u00a0World War II<\/a>.\u00a0 During the Holocaust, which occurred from 1933 to 1945, over 11 million people were executed.\u00a0 In total, 6 million were Jewish people, while the other 5 million included several other groups, including: disabled people, homosexuals, communists, Soviet and Polish prisoners of war, gypsies, and other religious and ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to understand the Holocaust, it first important to understand when and how it occurred.\u00a0 In general, it unfolded as a series of major events in several key stages.\u00a0 First were the major\u00a0causes of the Holocaust\u00a0which ultimately led to the start of the genocide, including:\u00a0\u00a0anti-Semitism<\/a>, Social Darwinism<\/a>,\u00a0Eugenics<\/a>, Ultranationalism, Adolf Hitler<\/a>, and the\u00a0Nazi Party<\/a>.\u00a0 The sections below detail the main stages of the Holocaust.\u00a0 In these sections you will find links to learn more detailed information about each topic in relation\u00a0to the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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HOLOCAUST – NUREMBERG LAWS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first stage of the Holocaust was the\u00a0Nuremberg Laws<\/a>.\u00a0 First passed in 1935, the Nuremberg Laws made German Jewish people second class citizens and banned sexual relations and marriage between Jewish people and persons of German blood.\u00a0 Officially, the Nuremberg Laws were known as the \u2019Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor\u2019.\u00a0 The goal of the laws for the Nazis was to limit the ability of Jewish genetic traits to spread and to legalize discrimination against Jewish people in Germany.\u00a0 In general, the Nazi regime carried out several different forms of discrimination against undesirable people in society, including: economic discrimination, social discrimination and political discrimination.\u00a0 The Nuremberg Laws best represents social discrimination, because the laws isolated Jewish people within their own country and outlawed them from expressing a sense of connection with the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nuremberg
Jewish people during the events of the Holocaust. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – KRISTALLNACHT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the most important events of the Holocaust is known as\u00a0Kristallnacht<\/a>, which translates to \u2018Night of Broken Glass\u2019.\u00a0 It was an organized attack carried out against Jewish people living in Germany on November 9th and 10th in 1938.\u00a0 The attack was carried out by\u00a0Sturmabteilung\u00a0forces (SA) which were the paramilitary part of the Nazi Party.\u00a0 Throughout the 1930s,\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0and the Nazi Party had risen to power in German politics.\u00a0 By 1938, the Nazi Party was well established in Germany and was a popular political force in the Reichstag, which was the name for the German parliament.\u00a0 The SA was made up of members of the Nazi Party and acted as a protection force for the party while also carrying out aggressive attacks against those deemed to be enemies of Germany, including the Jewish.\u00a0 The events of Kristallnacht saw SA forces destroy Jewish owned businesses, synagogues and homes.\u00a0 It was called \u2018Night of Broken Glass\u2019 due to the large amount of broken glass that was on the streets the next morning from the storefronts and homes.\u00a0 In total, 91 Jewish people were murdered and another 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kristallnacht\"
Jewish shops smashed during the events of Kristallnacht in 1938. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – JEWISH EMIGRATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, German Jewish people began to emigrate out of Germany.  Events, such as the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht highlighted the growing danger for Jewish people in Germany.  German Jews emigrated to several different places including: the United States, Palestine, South America and other countries in Europe.  For example, between 1933 and 1938 nearly 150,000 German Jewish people emigrated out of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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HOLOCAUST – MOVED TO THE GHETTOES<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A main event of the\u00a0Holocaust\u00a0was the creation of the\u00a0ghettos<\/a>\u00a0in Poland following the start of\u00a0World War II.\u00a0 World War II began on September 1st, 1939, with the\u00a0Nazi invasion of Poland.\u00a0 This was an important event, because Poland served an important purpose for Germany and the Holocaust.\u00a0 First,\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0viewed Poland (and the Soviet Union) as \u2018lebensraum\u2019, or living space, for German families.\u00a0 Second, it was in Poland that the Nazis established ghettos for the Jewish (and others).\u00a0 For example, Polish cities such as Warsaw were used to contain captured Jewish populations.\u00a0 Third, Poland became the site of many of the Nazi death camps that carried out the deaths of millions during the Holocaust.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Germany army captured territory (and people) across Europe they deported millions of Jewish people to the ghettos.  Ghettos were city districts in which the Jewish were forced to live, and which were used to isolate them from the rest of the European populations.  The ghettos were surrounded by walls or fences to prevent Jewish and non-Jewish people from interacting and to forcibly contain the Jewish.  In total there were over 800 ghettos established across Nazi controlled Europe during the time period.  The conditions of the ghettos were miserable.  Jewish families, who were forced to live in them, faced: overcrowding, starvation, lack of medical supplies, lack of proper sanitation and running water, lack of proper clothing to deal with extreme cold, spread of infectious diseases and forced to labor for the Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ghettos
View of the Frysztak Ghetto in the Krakow District. (1939 to 1942) (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – EINSATZGRUPPEN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the ways that the Nazi regime carried out the Holocaust was with the\u00a0einsatzgruppen<\/a>.\u00a0 The einsatzgruppen were\u00a0Schutzstaffel\u00a0(SS)<\/a> death squads that captured and killed Jewish and other minorities during the events of World War II and the Holocaust.\u00a0 In general, the death squads followed directly behind the front line Nazi forces as they conquered territory throughout Europe as part of World War II.\u00a0 Once the Nazi forces had captured an area, the einsatzgruppen would begin the process of rounding up any undesirable people living in the region and carry out their executions.\u00a0 Since the einsatzgruppen were part of the larger SS structure, their actions were under the direction of the head of the SS,\u00a0Heinrich Himmler<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Himmler<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – TRAINS TO THE CAMPS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next stage of the Holocaust was the removal of the Jewish from the ghettoes and their transportation to the camps<\/a> aboard trains.\u00a0 When they were being boarded upon the trains, the Jews were told to label their belongings which would follow them to their destinations. This was a lie to deceive the Jewish.\u00a0 The Nazis even constructed fake train stations with fake schedules to deceive the Jewish.\u00a0 The trains were not passenger trains but instead were boxcars which were typically used for shipping livestock or other shipped goods.\u00a0 There were 125 to 135 people stuffed into each boxcar.\u00a0 The passengers were not given food or water and the boxcars did not have toilets.\u00a0 The trains could take several days to arrive to their destinations, depending on the distance from the camps.\u00a0 As a result, many people died along the way, including old, young and sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon arriving to a camp, the survivors were removed from the trains into holding areas with electrified fences.  It was here that the Nazis began to separate the Jewish from each other. Women and children were separated from men.  Old and sick were separated from healthy.  Famously, Nazi soldiers and doctors separated the people to the left and right.  Those sent to the left were sent to their immediate death, while those sent to right were sent to carry out forced labor until they died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Types
Barbed wire double fences at Auschwitz. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – DEATH CAMPS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In general,\u00a0concentration camps<\/a>\u00a0were labor camps in which generally healthy men were sent to labor for the Nazis.\u00a0 The most famous concentration camp, which also had a death camp, was\u00a0Auschwitz<\/a>.\u00a0 People in concentration camps often died from disease, starvation and poor treatment due to the horrible conditions in which they were forced to live, including: overcrowding, lack of running water, lack of heat, lack of food, tiring and difficult labor, and mistreatment by Nazi guards.\u00a0 For example, the barracks for the prisoners were sometimes, literally, old horse sheds that the Nazis converted for humans by building crude bunk beds in the horse stalls.\u00a0 The bunks were built four levels high and the prisoners were forced to sleep with 3 to 4 people per level.\u00a0 A barrack typically held over 400 people inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation for those sent to death camps was much different.\u00a0 Death camps<\/a> were camps in which people were killed almost immediately after departing the train.\u00a0 This was the final destination for many old, young and sick people considered to be \u2018undesirable\u2019 by the Nazi Regime.\u00a0 While many concentration camps were located in Germany, death camps were generally located in Poland since it contained the highest population of Jewish peoples.\u00a0 As well, it allowed the Nazi government to remove the actual death camps from Germany and \u2018hide\u2019 their crimes.\u00a0 In 1942, the Nazis opened several famous death camps, including: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.\u00a0 Death camps evolved over time, especially in terms of how they carried out the executions.\u00a0 The death camps were constructed with gas chambers in which people could be locked and killed with a poisonous gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Life
Prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp inside their barracks in 1945. American soldiers had just liberated the camp during the end stages of World War II in Europe. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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HOLOCAUST – LIBERATION OF CAMPS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As\u00a0World War II\u00a0came to an end and the Allied armies pushed their way through Poland, they came across the systems of concentration and death camps that were part of the\u00a0Holocaust.\u00a0 While high command officers of the Allied forces were aware that the camps existed during the course of World War II, the average Allied soldier (American, British, Canadian, French, Soviet) were unaware and were surprised by the horrors they discovered.\u00a0 Often, the Nazi guards left in a rush and abandoned the camps fearing the arrival of the Allied troops.\u00a0 As such, they tried to execute as many prisoners as possible before abandoning their post and the Allied soldiers found camps with bodies scattered throughout.\u00a0 Since many were not killed before the Nazi guards fled the camps, the Allies also discovered thousands of sick and dying people.\u00a0 Other times, the Nazi guards took the prisoners with them and forced them to march until they died.\u00a0 Regardless, the Allied soldiers discovered horrible atrocities and began the process of recording their discovery for history.\u00a0 Many of the images that exist today, from the camps, come from the records of Allied soldiers who liberated the camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Auschwitz
Photo of Jewish children taken by Soviet soldiers during the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

HOLOCAUST – NUREMBERG TRIALS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The brutality of the\u00a0concentration camps and death camps shocked the Allied leaders and led to calls for justice against the Nazis based on the concepts of \u2018war crimes<\/a>\u2019 and \u2018crimes against humanity<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 During\u00a0World War II, the Allied powers met several times to discuss post-war Europe and how to bring the Nazis to justice.\u00a0\u00a0The Nuremberg Trials<\/a> began on November 19th, 1945 with indictments against twenty-four captured Nazis and different Nazi organizations, including: Nazi leadership, the SS, the\u00a0Gestapo<\/a>, and the SA.\u00a0 The first charge was that the Nazis participated in a conspiracy to wage war and end the peace following\u00a0World War I.\u00a0 The second charge was that the German leadership planned and carried our wars of aggression.\u00a0 The third charge was for war crimes and the fourth charge was for carrying out crimes against humanity.\u00a0 Of the twenty-four Nazis tried at the Nuremberg Trials\u00a0only five were found not guilty.\u00a0 The other nineteen were convicted and either sentenced to prison terms, including life in prison, or given a death sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nuremberg Trials were a significant event in the history of World War II and the Holocaust.\u00a0 They were the first such \u2018international\u2019 trials and established a model for future trials.\u00a0 For example, in the 1990s, following the genocide in Rwanda<\/a>, a similar international court was established to try war criminals from that country.\u00a0 As well, the Nuremberg Trials helped establish a renewed interest in human rights issues.\u00a0 For instance, the United Nations was established in 1946 with the goal of preventing similar future conflicts.\u00a0 Furthermore, the United Nations<\/a> created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> in 1948 with the goal of restoring faith in basic human rights and to avoid future related war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides<\/a>.
\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nuremberg
A view of the defendants during the Nuremberg Trials.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Holocaust was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany murdered six million Jewish people and millions of others considered ‘undesirable’. This article details the history and significance of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":19,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,51,47,21],"tags":[61,15,101,56,22],"class_list":["post-3305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holocaust","category-genocide","category-nazi-germany","category-world-war-ii","tag-genocide","tag-history","tag-holocaust","tag-nazi-germany","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5369,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/5369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}