Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day: 33 important Holocaust facts [View all]
There are certainly more than 33 things to know about the Holocaust, but some of these items may be less known, and by knowing them, we can cultivate a deeper understanding of the Nazi's "Final Solution."
The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.
The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word "Shoah," which means "devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide.
It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe.
An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered in the Holocaust.
On April 1, 1933, the Nazis instigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses.
A few of the major ghettos were located in the cities of Bialystok, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Vilna, and Warsaw.
Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as "concentration camps," there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps.
The Nazis built six extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Majdanek. (Auschwitz and Majdanek were both concentration and extermination camps.)
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