"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."
The holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War 2.
"The National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP, known as the Nazi Party, controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945. The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior"
It was the aim of Hitler's government to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. The Nazis wanted to get rid of millions of people they considered undesirable and "unworthy of life". Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were, their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions. Others were Nazi victims because of what they did.
The Nazis targeted groups of people because of their "racial inferiority". They persecuted Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, the mentally and physically disabled and Colored people. Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and other political enemies. How were they killed? Some of them were passively killed by starvation and widespread disease.
Mass killings began in June 1941 with the shooting of Jewish civilians during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1941 the Germans began deporting (=transferring) Jews to extermination (=death) camps in occupied Poland.
The Nazis killed approximately (=around) 11 million people.
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. By May 1945 about two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered.
World War II ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German armed forces in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945.
Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th, 1945.
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