The Jerusalem Post - Israel News

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.

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.

|ByDANIEL GOLDMAN
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu, draped in a blue and white prayer shawl, stands at the Western Wall on June 22, 2025.
MEL BROOKS speaks at an awards ceremony in 2015.

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

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

|BySTEVEN DRUCKER
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

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.

|ByHODAYA RAN, AVIHAI CHIIM
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.

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.”

|ByREBECCA SZLECHTER

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

Make the Holocaust Memorial Council great again: Making changes to fight antisemitism - opinion

In its current form, is the museum really fulfilling that important role? As a proud member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council, I shudder to say that the answer is, unfortunately, no.

JUNE 11, 2025
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

How many American Jews are there? A global study of world religions offers a new estimate

Pew’s latest study counts only Jews by religion, reducing the US Jewish population to 5.7 million.

JUNE 10, 2025
ByGRACE GILSON/JTA
Counting Jewish populations can be a subjective endeavor.

Milan and Como in spring: History, fashion, and more

Exploring springtime in Milan and Como: From the Duomo’s marble majesty to the Galleria’s fashion wonders.

JUNE 8, 2025
ByLAURI DONAHUE
LAKE COMO at Sunset

A name and a place: After 83 years, 52 descendants honor Holocaust victims in Antwerp

'Growing up, it was clear to me that I would live in Israel – it felt like the most fitting response to what my grandparents endured.'

JUNE 7, 2025
ByDEBBIE FRIEDMAN
SONNY BAURNFREUND speaks outside the home of the grandparents he never met.

This week in Jewish history: Anne Frank’s first diary entry, Israel bombs Iraqi nuke reactor

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

JUNE 7, 2025
BySTEVEN DRUCKER
Anne Frank diary in Madame Tussauds museum on April 25, 2017 in Amsterdam Netherlands.

Why this Holocaust survivors son thanks President Trump - opinion

My Holocaust survivor roots taught me to sense danger early. On October 7, that sense returned

JUNE 5, 2025
ByHARRY ZIMMERMAN 
Holocaust survivors light memorial candles on the day Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump participates in an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, U.S., October 7, 2024.

Survive, in Order to Create: Exhibiton launched in Ma'ale Adumim art museum

“The Destroyed World” hall presents the destroyed Jewish life. Apart from the killing of millions of people, the Holocaust involved the destruction of of a whole world of Jewish spirit and identity.

JUNE 3, 2025
ByALEK D. EPSTEIN
‘In Memory of the Victims of the Rumbula Forest Massacre’ by Haim Aronstam, 1973.