Holocaust

The Holocaust was a genocide organized by Germany’s ruling Nazi Party that began before the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and ended with Germany’s defeat in 1945. Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people due to race, ethnic background, or religion. The Holocaust was part of German leader Adolf Hitler’s plan to rid Germany of the people he saw as unfit to join his pure German Aryan race. Hitler targeted Jews, Poles, Gypsies (Romas), Soviets, the mentally and physically disabled, prisoners of war, and others. He forced them from their homes, placed them in labor camps called concentration camps, and later killed them. By the end of the Holocaust in 1945, more than eleven million...