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Line 1: − + − '''''The'' Holocaust''' refers specifically to the genocide of the European Jews by the [[Nazi]] regime of [[Germany]]. It was a policy of extermination carried on the direct orders of [[Adolf Hitler]] motivated by his anti-Semitic and National Socialist beliefs. + + − In addition to the genocide of 6 million Jews, several million other people were also victims of Nazi atrocities, including Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), physically and mentally disabled people, common criminals, homosexuals, communists and other political opponents of National Socialism regime.+ − + + + + + + + − Since the end of World War II, [[Holocaust denial]] has surfaced among fringe groups in the West with anti-semitic leanings. In Islam, the current President of Iran has also questioned it. The Germans kept numerous and accurate records of the massacres.
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[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|thumb|"Selection" of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
[[Image:Hgdye56.jpg|right|thumb|"Selection" of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers.]]
'''Holocaust''' means "completely burnt" and derives from the Greek word ''holokauston'' - (''holos'': completely, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god). The term was used to describe a catstrophe but was first used to describe Hitler's persecution of the Jews (and other groups he considered undesirable, like gypsies, communists and homosexuals) during [[World War II]] in 1942.
The '''Holocaust''' is a word based on the Yiddish and Hebrew word ''hurban'' (destruction), and the Greek word ''holokaustos'' (''holos'': complete, and ''kaustos'': a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god), and has been used specifically to describe the period of 1933-1945 in Nazi Germany when Jews were barred from social life and work, imprisoned en masse, and ultimately targeted for extermination under the policy of ''die Endlosung'' (the Final Solution). The word ''holocaust'' was chosen in reference to the large number of bodies fed to the crematoria of extermination camps built for that purpose.
==Origins==
After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through browbeatings and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in 1933, with [[Adolf Hitler]] as Chancellor, his ideology firmly entrenched within the party, and in the pages of his ''Mein Kampf'', a semi-biographical work containing his rambling political philosophy. In its pages Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the ''untermenschen'' (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.
Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 to lead a coalition government at the request of President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], and almost immediately he made moves to consolidate power to himself and the Nazi Party, as well as restrict or eliminate political opposition. Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott as soon as it began on April 1, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The Nurnburg Laws were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a German illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.
The records of the amount of people who were victims of genocide in total are between 10 and 12 million.
==Crystal Night==
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched began a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, [[Joseph Goebbels]], but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the head of the S.S., [[Reinhard Heydrich]] later that evening, who specified that S.S. and S.A. units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 Synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week local jails as well as the new [[Buchenwald]] and [[Dacau]] concentration camps were quickly filled. To further add insult to injury, the Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion marks.
The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany, which was called ''Kristallglas'' for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: ''Kristallnacht'' (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.
==World War II==
When World War II began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, go to a park, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation would be forbidden by 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing was mandatory.
==External Links==
==External Links==