Holocaust Encyclopedia
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The Third Reich
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Third Reich (Abridged Article)
The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy established in Germany after World War I.
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Antisemitism (Abridged Article)
The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews.
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Final Solution (Abridged Article)
The Nazis used the term "Final Solution" to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people.
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Racism (Abridged Article)
Racists are people who believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior.
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World War II in Europe (Abridged Article)
World War II resulted in an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide.
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Perpetrators (Abridged Article)
The members of the SS, the elite guard of the Nazi regime, were key players in the "Final Solution," the plan to murder the Jews of Europe.
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The Holocaust
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Holocaust (Abridged Article)
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
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Ghettos (Abridged Article)
The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities forced the city's Jews to live.
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Nazi Camps (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 40,000 camps and other incarceration sites.
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Pogroms (Abridged Article)
Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.”
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Einsatzgruppen (Abridged Article)
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were squads composed primarily of German SS and police personnel.
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Gassing Operations (Abridged Article)
The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of mental patients ("euthanasia") using pure, chemically manufactured carbon monoxide gas.
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Killing Centers (Abridged Article)
The Nazis established killing centers for efficient mass murder.
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Victims of the Nazi Era
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Mosaic of Victims (Abridged Article)
Although the Jews were their primary targets, the Nazis and their collaborators also persecuted other groups for racial or ideological reasons.
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Women during the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
The Nazi regime frequently subjected women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to brutal persecution that was sometimes unique to the gender of the victims.
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Children during the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
Children were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust.
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Euthanasia Program (Abridged Article)
The term "euthanasia" (literally, "good death") usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual who would otherwise suffer.
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Anne Frank (Abridged Article)
Anne Frank was one of over one million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.
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Rescue and Resistance
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Refugees (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, more than 340,000 Jews emigrated from Germany and Austria.
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Rescue (Abridged Article)
Despite the indifference of most Europeans and the collaboration of others in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust, individuals in every European country and from all religious backgrounds risked their lives to help Jews.
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Jewish Resistance (Abridged Article)
Although Jews were the Nazis' primary victims, they too resisted oppression in a variety of ways, both collectively and as individuals.
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Non-Jewish Resistance (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, a variety of groups offered resistance to the Nazi regime, both in Germany and in German-occupied territory.
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United States and the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
During World War II, rescue of Jews and other victims of the Nazis was not a priority for the United States government.
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After the Holocaust
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Liberation of Nazi Camps (Abridged Article)
As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners suffering from starvation and disease.
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War Crimes Trials (Abridged Article)
After World War II, both international and domestic courts conducted trials of accused war criminals.
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International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Abridged Article)
The trials of leading German officials before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the best known of the postwar war crimes trials, formally opened in Nuremberg, Germany, on November 20, 1945, only six and a half months after Germany surrendered.
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Aftermath of the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
In 1945, when Allied troops entered the Nazi concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes—testimony to mass murder.
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Genocide (Abridged Article)
The English-language term "genocide" did not exist before 1944.