The Holocaust Memorial Day January 27th 2013 By Jack Bastable

The Holocaust The Holocaust (Shoah) was a unique event in 20th century history. It evolved slowly between 1933 and 1945. It began with discrimination; then the Jews were separated from their communities and persecuted; and finally they were treated as less than human beings and murdered. During the Second World War the Nazis sought to murder the entire Jewish population of Europe and to destroy its culture. In 1941 there were about 11 million Jews living in Europe; by May 1945 the Nazis had murdered six million of them. One-and-a-half million of these were children. We now call these events the Holocaust. Whilst the Jews of Europe were the Nazis’ primary target, many millions of other people were also imprisoned, enslaved and murdered. These people included Roma, those with mental or physical disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists, political opponents, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis did not act alone. They were supported and assisted by people from within the countries they occupied across Europe. Most countries stood by while the Nazis and their accomplices carried out the mass murder of the Jewish people.

The Final Solution During the summer of 1941, in breach of Hitler’s agreement with Joseph Stalin, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Following the German army into battle were the Einsatzgruppen. Local people supported these killing squads, one of the main tasks of which was to kill all Jewish men, women and children in the areas that were being conquered. By December 1941, over 500,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered. However, for the Nazis leadership, conventional killing methods were insufficient and inefficient. On 20 January 1942, 15 leading officials of the Nazi state met at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to discuss the ’Final solution of the Jewish Question’. The ’Final solution’ was a code name for the murder of all the Jews of Europe. The people present at the conference were to discuss how to make mass murder happen in an organised and methodical way.

People Respond The Holocaust is very difficult to understand. It tested human nature and led to extreme reactions. Some writers today, when they consider the Holocaust, categorise the people affected in the following ways: as victims, as perpetrators, as bystanders and as rescuers. This section gives examples from each category and explains how people across the world responded to the events in Nazi controlled Europe. This includes the treatment of communities and peoples by the Nazis and their accomplices. More importantly, the section seeks to question why some people acted in a way that enabled or allowed the Nazis to carry out their inhumane polices and why others acted to protect and save lives.