Holocaust it was a systematic action of extermination of the jews, in all regions of Europe dominated by the Germans, in the concentration camps, undertaken by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, during the Second World War (1939-1945).
The word holocaust is of Greek origin holos (all) and kaustro (burnt out). from hebrew shoah (the catastrophe).
Originally, the term burnt offering was used to name a kind of sacrifice practiced by the ancient Hebrews, in honor of their God, in which the victim was completely burned.
Causes of the Holocaust
The fundamental point of Nazism was the racismAccording to this ideology, the Germans belonged to a superior race, the Aryan, which without mixing with other races, should command the world. Jews were considered their main enemies.
Jews were the main victims of the paranoia of the Nazi ideologues, who blamed them for the chaos in which Germany lived after the First World War and the peace treaties. Furthermore, Hitler and his followers defended the thesis that the Jews were of an inferior race and should be eliminated.
The great theorist of anti-Semitism (a set of ideas and feelings hostile to Jews) was Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, its greatest promoter. Laws against Jews grew as the Nazis seized power.
extermination of the jews
With World War II, the Germans proceeded to exterminate the Jews, following scientific methods. The planned extermination strategy led to the death of around 6 million people in the concentration camps, not counting those who died in the ghettos (Nazi-dominated cities, surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, destined for the confinement of the Jews).
In the camps of Auschwitz, Poland, in just three days, 22,000 Jews were murdered, gas chambered and cremated. Among several other camps that evoke the horror of the genocide are: Dachau and Buchenwald in Germany and Treblinka in Poland.
With the weakening of Germany, on January 27, 1945, the Soviets arrived at the Auschwitz camp, where they released the first prisoners. That day is now "International Holocaust Remembrance Day".
