Birkenau - Home Page - Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Anne Frank House: Online ticket sales. Introductory History to the Holocaust. The Holocaust (also called Ha-Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933 - when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany - to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe officially ended.
During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsher persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of all world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Germany's deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung). Background Propaganda: “The Jews Are Our Misfortune” A major tool of the Nazis' propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). The Jews Are Isolated from Society The “Final Solution”
Holocaust. World War II: Timeline. The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students. Holocaust Resources. Night-Elie Wiesel. The Book Thief.