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Holocaust

The Holocaust, or the Shoah, is defined by Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, as the "sum total of all anti-Jewish actions carried out by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945." Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany systematically killed at least 6 million European Jews, approximately two-thirds of Europe's pre-war Jewish population, during the Holocaust. The Nazi regime also murdered Roma, disabled, homosexuals, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, political opponents and black people. Nazi regime & the rise to power The collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic, founded after the First World War, amid economic strife and political violence, saw the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Despite a failed putsch in 1923, the Nazi Party became the largest party in Germany in the 1930s and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 by German President Paul von Hindenburg. Although Hitler had risen to power through democratic means, Nazi Germany pursued a path of institutionalized violence and political suppression, racial propaganda and persecution of non-Aryan minority groups. From April 1933, antisemitic legislation was implemented and Jews boycotted. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws were announced, excluding Jews from German citizenship and marriage with Germans, thereby institutionalizing much of the racism that was held to be important in Nazi ideology. The late 1930s saw intense antisemitic policies implemented by the Nazi regime, culminating in Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938, attacks on the Jews of Vienna following the annexation of Austria and mass arrests and deportations. World War II The Second World War began when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Shortly afterwards, German forces began the process of confining Jewish Poles in ghettos. The Nazi occupation of the USSR and eastern Poland led to the murder of many Jews, with those remaining confined to ghettos. The establishment of concentration camps, initially for "undesirables" and political opponents, was built up into a network of hundreds of concentration and extermination camps in German-occupied territory. The first extermination of prisoners at the infamous Auschwitz camp took place in September 1941. Final Solution The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was formulated by the Nazi leadership at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference with the goal of the annihilation of the Jewish people. Jews from across Europe were deported en masse to concentration and extermination camps and murdered by an extensive system of gas chambers, death marches and killing squads. Only 10% of Polish Jewry, who numbered over 3 million before the war, survived the Holocaust. Although there is no exact figure for the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the number of victims was approximately six million. Post-Holocaust The horrors of the Holocaust were only fully understood with the liberation of the camps by Allied soldiers. Refusing or unable to return to their countries of origin, many survivors remained in Displaced Person's camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. The British refused to permit survivors to emigrate to Palestine, and it was therefore only in 1948 that the newly-established State of Israel absorbed many of the displaced survivors. Others made Western countries their new home. Sadly, the number of Holocaust survivors that remain alive and able to recount first-hand their experiences of the horrors of persecution are dwindling all the time. International Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated annually on 27 January. The day remembers the six million Jews murdered and the millions of people killed in Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides across the world.

In a Polish town where locals burned Jews alive in 1941, new plaques deny complicity with Nazis

In 1941, local residents of Jedwabne killed hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, most of them in a barn where they were burned alive.

|BySHIRA LI BARTOV/JTA
A man reads one of the plaques newly placed near a Polish monument to the wartime Jedwabne massacre of Jews by their Polish neighbors, July 10, 2025. The plaques question the official findings and claim that "the crime was committed by a German pacification unit" instead of local Poles.
The river Nid offers picturesque views in Trondheim, Norway, home to one of the northernmost Jewish communities in the world.

This northern Norway city has adopted a one-of-a-kind approach to observing Shabbat

Located on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, this Norwegian city has a unique approach to observing Shabbat and a history of handling challenging situations.

|ByDAN FELLNER/JTA
The entrance to Auschwitz, the Nazi Concentration camp, next to a photo of protestors outside of the Everglades ICE detention facility, with signs calling it a "Concentration Camp," with a photo of the barbed wire of Auschwitz in the background.

Critics controversial nickname for ICE’s Everglades detention facility: ‘Alligator Auschwitz’

“Every a**-clown who compares Alligator Alcatraz to Auschwitz clearly has no mental comprehension of how horrible the Holocaust was,” Stuart Rojstaczer, said.

|ByANDREW SILOW-CARROLL/JTA
Frontex’s Executive Director Hans Leijtens speaks to German and Greek border police during his visit at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, near Kapitan Andreevo, Bulgaria, February 29, 2024.

Bavarian policeman keeps job after wishing Holocaust survivor gets sent to camps

The police officer worked as a personal protection officer between 2016 and 2020, at which point he was banned.

|ByMATHILDA HELLER

Lost music from Auschwitz performed after 80 years

The music Geyer documented was played for the first time in 80 years at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on June 3-7, 2025.

JULY 6, 2025ByGIL ZOHAR
THE WORDS ‘arbeit macht frei’ hang above the gate at Auschwitz: ‘At Auschwitz and Birkenau, what stood out wasn’t just what we saw; it was what we didn’t hear,’ says the writer.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: A humanist composer who opposed the Nazis, helped Jews

So, next time you hear the rapt, silken poetry of The Lark Ascending, give a thought not only to Vaughan Williams the composer, but to the humanist who opposed the Nazis.

JULY 6, 2025ByBARRY BORMAN
A portrait of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, c. 1920.

Staro Sajmiste: Belgrade's fairground of death for the Balkans' Jews

From formidable fairground to a camp of death, the dark history of the Nazi camp within Belgrade’s borders

JULY 5, 2025ByALEX WINSTON
SAJMIŠTE DETAINEES in a nearby labor camp located at the very confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where inmates from Sajmište worked.

From 1945 to 2025: Netanyahu channels Churchill as he seeks to turn war into legacy - opinion

Both men understood that in politics, being right isn’t enough – you must also be right at the right moment, with the right crisis, and the right democratic mandate.

JUNE 29, 2025ByDANIEL GOLDMAN
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu, draped in a blue and white prayer shawl, stands at the Western Wall on June 22, 2025.

This week in Jewish history: Happy birthday to Mel Brooks, Franz Kafka

A highly abridged weekly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History.

JUNE 28, 2025BySTEVEN DRUCKER
MEL BROOKS speaks at an awards ceremony in 2015.

Survivors of Holocaust face new hardships after missile attack on Rehovot center

For the elderly people who visit the center each week, however, it’s more than just a club—it's home. Now, with the facility damaged and nowhere to gather, they have one request: not to be forgotten.

JUNE 27, 2025ByHODAYA RAN, AVIHAI CHIIM
A building at the campus of the Weizmann Institute of Science remains damaged following an Iranian missile strike on Sunday, in Rehovot, Israel June 19, 2025

Edward R. Murrow, the first NYC public High School to bring ‘Names, Not Numbers’, Holocaust program

“What started as an idea became something much bigger and more powerful than we expected,” he said. “This program is about learning from the past to make the world better.”

JUNE 25, 2025ByREBECCA SZLECHTER
Holocaust survivor Ernie Brod speaks to students at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn as part of the Names, Not Numbers Holocaust education program.

Macron’s push for a Palestinian state is a betrayal of Israel, France, and democracy - opinion

French President Emmanuel Macron's push for Palestinian statehood is reportedly due to pressure from radical Muslim communities, but that

JUNE 19, 2025ByDAVID BEN-BASAT
FRANCE’S PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Nice earlier this month. Under Macron’s leadership, France is drifting away from Israel and from the core values of Western democracy, the writer argues.

Tze’ela Gez’s mother-in-law, Naomi: 'Life is still beautiful'

'For me, life is very, very straight. Hashem is the king. We have to understand what that means deeply. It’s not just words.'

JUNE 19, 2025ByRIVKAH LAMBERT ADLER
Hananel, Tze'ela and sons in happier times.

Netanyahu: We struck Iran to prevent nuclear Holocaust

"It was the 12th hour, and we did act. To save ourselves but also … to protect the world from this incendiary regime,” Netanyahu told Fox News's Bret Baier.

JUNE 15, 2025ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center), Defense Minister Israel Katz (L) and PM Military Secretary Maj.-Gen. Roman Gofman (R) directing Operation Rising Lion, June 14, 2025.

Vandals daub swastikas on Jewish gravestones in Moldova

A criminal case was opened on grounds of desecration and inciting racial hatred but no further details were provided on the incident.

JUNE 13, 2025ByREUTERS
Soroca Jewish Cemetery Holocaust memorial vandalized with "free Palestine."