Introduction to the Holocaust

During the Nazi era, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma (Gypsies), people with disabilities, some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others), Soviet prisoners of war, and Black people. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

threat to the so-called German racial community.

They claimed that the Jews belonged to a race that was "inferior" and a threat to the so-called German racial community.

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators.

Many Jewish people hid from the Nazis during World War II. They would hide with non-Jewish families. Sometimes they would pretend to be a part of the family and sometimes they would hide in hidden rooms or in a basement or attic. Some were able to eventually escape across the border into a free country, but many hid for years sometimes in the same room.

People would be led into the chambers in large groups only to be killed with poison gas.

The Holocaust

Chancellor

race of perfect people.

A Jewish boy and mother being arrested

He went on to express his regret at belonging to an organization that caused the death of vast numbers of people, as well as causing pain for the victims and their relatives.

Hanning did not respond. 

It was also an opportunity for justice more than 70 years after the end of the war.

It was also an opportunity for justice more than 70 years after the end of the war.

Hanning did not respond. 

five years in prison

The former guard is now 94 years old and the trial is likely the last of its kind.

Under the Executive Order, some 112,000 Japanese Americans—79,000 of whom were American citizens—were removed from the West Coast and placed into ten internment camps located in remote areas. Japanese Americans were given only a few days' notice to report for internment, and many had to sell their homes and businesses for much less than they were worth. In so doing, they lost much of what they had accrued in the course of their lives.1^11

Japanese Americans sold their businesses and houses for a fraction of their value before being sent to the camps. In the process, they lost their livelihoods and much of their lifesavings.

The president’s order came less than three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, amid concerns that Japanese American citizens might pose a threat to national security. These concerns were driven by public hysteria grounded in racism and false reports of sabotage and collaboration with the enemy.

"The smell was quite strong," he said. "It's a sad reality that the smell human beings produce when they are burned is the same as that of the dried squid when it is grilled."

So many had, in an instant, lost those dearest to them. Eiko Taoka, then 21-years-old, was carrying her 1-year-old infant son in her arms aboard a streetcar. He didn't survive the day. "I think fragments of glass had pierced his head," she recounts. "His face was a mess because of the blood flowing from his head. But he looked at my face and smiled. His smile has remained glued in my memory."

A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers.

But what of the victims? Swaths of Hiroshima disappeared in a blistering flash, yet there were survivors. Here are some of the eyewitness testimonies of what took place on that terrible day in August 1945. (They have been gleaned from a number of oral history projects, all of which are easily accessible online.)

It almost instantly leveled most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people. Three days later, on Aug. 9, another American bomber dropped a nuclear device on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 to 80,000 people.

I lost my family in the Holocaust. I also lost the images of my past. Everything was destroyed: my home, my material possessions, including nearly every picture. Most importantly, none of my relatives survived.

During my life I have lived in many places but only a few of them would I call home.

I now fully felt the pain of the loss of my sisters and the anger at the perpetrators and collaborators responsible for the murder of two bright and beautiful young girls, only five and seven,

man-made hell called Auschwitz.

The town’s Jewish population was about 3,000 before the Holocaust. Only a dozen or so survived.