Holocaust

What Does Holocaust Mean?
• The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.
• The term "Holocaust,"originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word "Shoah," which means"devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide.
• In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted theNazis was sent to forced labor or murdered.
• The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party").
• The Nazis used the term"the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people.
The Big Numbers
• It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.• The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe.
• An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered in the Holocaust.
Persecution Begins
• On April 1, 1933, the Nazisinstigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses.
• The Nuremberg Laws, issued on September 15, 1935, began to exclude Jews from public life.The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans. The Nuremberg Laws set the legalprecedent for further anti-Jewish legislation.
• Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired themfrom civil service jobs (i.e. government jobs), made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from working on anyone other than Jewish patients.
• During the night of November...