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The Holocaust
A Brief Introduction
What was it?
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The Holocaust took place in Europe
between the years of 1933 and 1945.
It was Adolf Hitler’s and the Nazi party’s
attempt to arrest, displace, and exterminate
the Jewish people of Europe.
Unfortunately, their attempts were nearly
successful.
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Six Million Jewish people died during the
Holocaust.
An additional four million other people died
in the concentration camps in Europe.
Why did it happen?
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Anti-Semitism had existed in Europe since
the beginning of Christendom.
Progroms and inquisitions in which
thousands of Jews were killed occurred
during the Middle Ages and the 1600’s.
World War I
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But to understand the Holocaust one must first
understand World War I.
World War I took place from 1914-1918.
The countries of Europe, along with the United
States and Japan, lost a total of 9 million people.
For four years, millions died in France, Belgium,
and Germany over what finally amounted to a few
hundred yards of earth.
The consequences.
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Germany, Austria, and Turkey lost the war.
The monarchies of Germany, Russia,
Austria, and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey)
collapsed.
Germany was financially devastated and
spiritually broken.
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Adolf Hitler, awarded for courage during the war,
blamed Jews and communists for Germany’s
loss.
In his diaries, he wrote that within weeks of
learning of Germany’s loss in November of 1918
he had determined in his mind what must be
done.
Within months, Hitler and other former soldiers
began to form what would become the Nazi party.
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In 1933, after years of economic hardships,
Hitler’s party gained dominance in
Germany.
Within weeks Hitler claimed power from his
chancellor and the Holocaust, in Germany,
began.
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In 1938, Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies spread to
Austria and Czechoslovakia as Germany lay claim
to these countries.
1939 Germany invaded Poland and World War II
began.
By 1941, all of Europe except neutral Switzerland,
had fallen to Nazi control.
The policies of the Nazis extended through all of
Europe.
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At first, the arrests and exterminations were
improvised and informal: mass arrests,
mass shootings, mass graves.
In 1939, however, the extermination
became more systematic with the
construction of concentration camps across
Europe.
The Final Solution
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In 1941, the Nazis proposed the Final Solution to
what they called the Jewish problem.
This solution was the systematic and extensive
extermination of the Jews in the concentration
camps.
To accomplish this the Gestapo employed gas
chambers, shootings, starvation, and forced labor.
The rate of killing reached horrifying rates.
The Casualties
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1914-1945 100 Million people died either
directly or indirectly from war.
The End
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In 1945, with the Americans and British advancing
from the west and Russia advancing from the
east, Germany fell.
Hitler committed suicide, and the allied soldiers
liberated the camps.
What they found horrified them.
In the years that followed Jewish survivors
immigrated to Israel (formed in 1947), the United
States, Canada and other Commonwealth
countries.