10.7 The Holocaust and the War's Aftermath

Notes

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of about 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

• Nazi ideology was based on antisemitism (hatred of Jews) and false racial theories.
• Steps: the Nuremberg Laws (1935) removed Jews' citizenship; Kristallnacht (November 1938) was a wave of violence against Jewish homes, shops and synagogues; Jews were forced into ghettos.
• Mobile killing squads shot Jews in Eastern Europe. At the Wannsee Conference (1942), officials coordinated the "Final Solution," the plan to murder all European Jews in death camps such as Auschwitz.
• The Nazis also murdered Roma, disabled people, Polish and Soviet civilians, political opponents, gay men and others.
• Genocide is the deliberate killing of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The word was created in 1944 to describe these crimes.
• Japanese forces also committed atrocities, such as the Nanjing Massacre (1937).
• After the war: the Nuremberg Trials prosecuted Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity; the United Nations was founded in 1945; and the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.