The holocaust has been called the most terrible catastrophe in world history. Another word for Holocaust is the Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning "a whirlwind of destruction". The Holocaust was the mass murder of six million Jewish people during World War Two. Before the Holocaust nine million Jews lived in Europe, but after Holocaust two thirds of them were dead. The Jews weren't the only victims of Nazi hatred. The gypsies, people with handicaps, communists, and prisoners of war were targeted. The leader of the hateful group, the Nazis was Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler and the Nazis mission were to rid Germany and other parts of Europe of the Jews. Hitler thought the Jews were to blame for Germany's economic downfall. You were considered a Jew if you had two or more Jewish parents, belonged to the Jewish religion, or were married to a Jewish person.
Concentration Camps were Jewish reservations. During the Holocaust the Jews were forced to sell their businesses and properties to the Nazis. The Jews could only take what they could carry. Millions of Jews were killed before they made it to Concentration Camps. By 1938 two thirds of German Jews had left the country, and 60% who stayed lost their life. The Jews in Poland were forced to wear a yellow Jewish star and perform forced labor for no pay. The living conditions were overcrowding, lack of proper sanitation, disease, and hunger. In the Warsaw Ghetto 20% died in 1941 because of these living conditions. The killings in the camps were to be conducted by mobile SS and police units called Einsatzgruppen. The police would line the Jews up in front of massive graves they dug and then shoot them. Around 30,000 Jews died this way. During the winter the killing spree went down because the ground was so froze no one could be buried. Citizens from Belgium and Netherlands who were anti-Nazis helped hide Jews.
