Holocaust

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. Believing the Aryan race to be superior to all others, the Nazis discriminated against all non-Aryans and Jews in particular. Throughout the mid-1930s, they fired them from jobs and public positions; destroyed their homes, businesses, and places of worship; and shipped them to concentration camps. After the outbreak of World War II, Hitler’s Nazis implemented the “Final Solution” for their supposed Jewish problem. Jews were executed in mass shootings and gas vans, then in extermination camps specially-designed to kill millions of Jews in gas chambers. The systematic killing of Jews came to an end in 1945, when the Allies broke Nazi lines, captured Berlin, and forced the surrender of the Third Reich. During the Holocaust, 6 million Jews lost their lives, and another 11 million individuals deemed inferior by Nazi occupiers lost their lives as well.