Jewish Holocaust

The Holocaust
Part of World War II
Hungarian Jews being selected by Nazis to be sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz Album May/June 1944
Location	Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories
Date	1941–1945
Target	European Jews— broader usage of the term "Holocaust" includes non-Jewish victims of other Nazi crimes.
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportation, mass murder
Deaths	around 6,000,000 Jewish victims somewhere over 9,000,000 other victims, perhaps more
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany and its allies
No. of participants	200,000

The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and constituted about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had previously resided in Continental Europe. A broader definition of the Holocaust includes non-Jewish victims, such as the Romani, Poles, members of other Slavic ethnic groups, and Aktion T4 patients who were killed because they were mentally and physically disabled. An even broader definition includes Soviet citizens, prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, blacks, political opponents of the Nazis, and members of other smaller groups.

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in a genocide, which was part of a larger event that included the persecution and murder of other peoples in Europe. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in both the logistics and the carrying out of the mass murder. Killings were committed throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany itself, and they were also committed across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, and other Slavs; Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs; communists; homosexuals; Jehovah's Witnesses; and others. Some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of committing gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators.