The Holocaust: When Did The Persecution Of Jews Begin?

The Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of European Jews, began in 1933 with the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler's regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the occupation authorities established ghettos to segregate Jews. The mass killing of Jews began in 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union, when German forces and local collaborators shot 1.5 to 2 million Jews. In late 1941 or early 1942, the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported to extermination camps, where they were killed primarily through mass shootings and poison gas. The Holocaust ended in 1945 with the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Holocaust

After invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis began establishing ghettos to segregate Jews, and following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, they shot between 1.5 to 2 million Jews with the help of local collaborators. Later, in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported to extermination camps, where they were killed with poison gas. Others were sent to forced labor camps, where many died from starvation, abuse, or deadly medical experiments.

Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland

Hitler's blitzkrieg ("lightning war") strategy was characterised by extensive early bombing campaigns aimed at destroying the enemy's air capacity, railroads, communication lines, and munitions dumps. This was followed by a massive land invasion involving overwhelming numbers of troops, tanks, and artillery. Once a base of operations was established in the target country, Hitler would set up "security" forces to annihilate all enemies of his Nazi ideology, be they racial, religious, or political. Concentration camps and the extermination of civilians went hand-in-hand with German rule in conquered nations.

The invasion of Poland was a highly calculated risk, as Hitler's general staff worried that the assault was premature due to the army not being at full strength. However, the invasion exceeded their initial expectations, and the Polish army was defeated within weeks. The German military's ability to combine air power and armour in a new kind of mobile warfare demonstrated its overwhelming military superiority over Poland.

Following the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units of the German Security Police and Security Service, followed behind front-line troops, killing Polish dissidents, resisters, elites, and Jews. Shortly after the German occupation, the first Jewish ghetto was established in Piotrków Trybunalski, a city in central Poland. As the war progressed and mass emigration of Jews proved difficult, Nazi authorities created more and more ghettos in 1940-41 in areas near rail lines, where Jewish populations could be easily concentrated and moved. These ghettos were overcrowded and unsanitary, and Jewish residents were denied proper food, medical services, and heat. Starvation and disease killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in Warsaw and Łódź, two of the largest ghettos in Poland.

Ghettos and concentration camps

The Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of European Jews, began in 1933 with the seizure of power by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in Germany. The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and the pursuit of "living space", and from the beginning, they dreamed of a world without Jews.

After invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis began to implement their plan to secure more land for the German people and to carry out their racist policies. They swiftly conquered country after country in Europe. As they conquered new territories, the Nazis and their collaborators forced Jews into crowded and enclosed areas called ghettos. Ghettos were used to isolate and segregate Jews from the general population. Over 1,000 ghettos were set up throughout the Nazi-occupied territories. In the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, more than 400,000 Jews were packed into an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of over seven people per room. Food and medicine were insufficient, and tens of thousands starved to death or died of disease. Other large ghettos included Łódź, with a population of 165,000, and Kraków.

In addition to the ghettos, the Nazis also established thousands of concentration camps, forced labour camps, and transit camps, where the treatment of prisoners was brutal. The largest of these camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, which had four poison gas chambers disguised as showers. Up to 6,000 Jews were gassed there each day. An estimated 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, including more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war.

In 1941, the Nazis began experimenting with gas as a means of killing people, having seen its effectiveness in killing disabled people. They also began to use mobile killing units, or Einsatzgruppen, to follow the German military into the Soviet Union, which they invaded in June of that year. These units massacred Jews, Roma, communists, and Soviet officials, in what became known as the "Holocaust by bullets". The Einsatzgruppen killed at least 1.5 million Jews and tens of thousands of others.

In January 1942, high-ranking Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference to discuss "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question". They decided to begin large-scale deportations of Jews from the ghettos to death camps, or killing centres, and to concentration camps. The first death camp was Chelmno, which opened in December 1941. Here, victims were loaded into vans that were then sealed and filled with exhaust fumes, killing everyone inside. This method was later deemed inefficient, and the Nazis switched to using industrial gas chambers at camps such as Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In total, over six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, along with millions of other victims, including Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, and people with disabilities.

The Final Solution

The "Final Solution" was the Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. The term was a euphemism used by Nazi Germany's leaders, referring to the mass murder of Europe's Jews.

The "Final Solution" was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. The Holocaust was the Nazi Germany-led, deliberate, organised, state-sponsored persecution and genocide of approximately six million European Jews. The Final Solution was the culmination of a decade of increasingly severe discriminatory, anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis.

The Wannsee Conference, held in January 1942, was a secret meeting of leading police and civilian officials to discuss the continuing implementation of the "Final Solution". The Nazi leaders envisioned killing 11 million Jews as part of the "Final Solution" and succeeded in murdering six million.

The "Final Solution" was not the same as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of Europe's Jews from 1933 to 1945, coordinated and perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its allies. The "Final Solution" was the last stage of the Holocaust, during which the vast majority of Jews who died in the Holocaust were murdered.

Death camps

The Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews during World War II, involved the use of six death camps or extermination camps in Occupied Poland: Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. These camps were used by Nazi Germany to systematically murder over 2.7 million people, with Jews as the primary target, accounting for over 90% of extermination camp victims.

The death camps were established in late 1941 and early 1942, with Chełmno, located in the Wartheland, being the first to open in December 1941. The camps were located in heavily wooded areas, away from population centres, but connected to the railway network. The victims, who were mostly Jews, were deported by rail to the camps, where they were murdered, primarily through poison gas.

At the camps, the victims were ordered to undress and leave their possessions behind. They were then directed to a 'cleaning area' where any valuables were stolen for the Nazi war effort. The victims were then herded into gas chambers, where they were killed using carbon monoxide gas from large tank engines or, in the case of Chełmno, gas vans. The bodies were disposed of in pits and burned.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the only death camp where Jewish arrivals were not immediately killed, had a "selection" process. Here, the ability to work of the arrivals was assessed, with the old, the very young, and the physically weak being sent to the gas chambers. Those deemed fit for physical labour were forced to work under harsh and violent conditions, enduring beatings, overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and minuscule rations.

The death camps were designed for the rapid and systematic killing of people, with most deportees being murdered within a few hours of their arrival. The entire process of murder, from the arrival of the victims to their disposal, took only a few hours, and the camps could process and murder numerous transports in a single day.

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