Holocausto

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of Jews and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II, roughly from 1933 to 1945. While it primarily targeted Jews, the regime also sought to eradicate Roma and Sinti, disabled people, political dissidents, LGBTQ individuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, and others considered "undesirable" or enemies of the state.

The persecution began with intensified anti-Jewish propaganda and legal discrimination, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that deprioritized citizenship and civil rights. The violence widened with actions such as Kristallnacht in 1938, followed by mass segregation in ghettos and forced relocations after 1939 as Germany occupied much of Europe.

Mass murder occurred across concentration and extermination camps established or controlled by the regime. Extermination camps, notably Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Chelmno, used gas chambers and other methods as part of the so-called Final Solution, a plan formalized at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. Deportations and killings accelerated with the war’s expansion and the occupation of territories.

About six million Jews were murdered, representing a vast majority of European Jews. Non-Jewish victims included hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti, disabled people killed under euthanasia programs, and millions of others, including Polish and Soviet civilians and POWs.

Liberation by Allied forces in 1944–1945 uncovered the scale of the crimes. The Holocaust remains a central subject of historical scholarship, memory, and education, emphasizing the consequences of prejudice, totalitarianism, and unchecked violence.