1 - Introduction

Summary

The Holocaust is typically known as the attempt by the Nazis to degrade, humiliate, and eventually destroy European Jewry from 1933 to 1945. The extermination of Jews began in June 1941 in the Soviet Union while deportation to the death camps proceeded from October of that year until 1944. Jews were systematically starved, beaten, and worked to death in 1,600 labor camps or ghettoes; 52 concentration camps and 1,202 satellite camps (Aussenlager) were created for the main purpose of instituting the Final Solution: making Europe Judenrein (free of Jews). Other asocials that the Nazis deemed a threat to the Volk, including pacifists, people with mental health problems, Seventh Day Adventists, Gypsies (Sinti and Roma), criminals, political dissenters, and homosexuals, were also singled out for persecution. The original concentration camps found within Germany from 1933 to 1939 were designed to incarcerate political prisoners, religious opponents, and homosexuals. In 1939, Germany began its euthanasia program against people with mental health problems and physical disabilities, which soon led to their gassing. By 1942, the murder of Germans with disabilities led to the systematic gassing of Gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals in the extermination camps. The total death toll in the concentration and extermination camps was eleven million, approximately five to six million of whom were Jews; the total number of deaths of Gypsies and homosexuals is inconclusive, with the former ranging from 220,000 to 500,000 and the latter ranging from a low of 5,000 to a high of 220,000 (see chapter 10).