What Happened During the Holocaust?

The Holocaust refers to the murder and persecution of Jews by the Nazis under German leader, Adolf Hitler. The Holocaust is also used to describe the genocide of Jewish people in other regimes or periods as well. The origin of the term is most likely from the Greek word, “holokauston” where” “holos” refers to whole while “kauston” is defined as burnt. The holocaust began from April 1933 until the end of World War II.

Some estimates of the number of individuals who were persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust reach as high as 11 million victims, including many children and women. Six million of the victims were Jewish, while the rest were gays, lesbians, gypsies, and others who were labeled as outcasts by the Nazis. During the start of the Nazi movement, most Jewish groups and establishments were boycotted and laws were implemented to discriminate against the Jews. Such laws included a prohibition against mixed marriages, a prohibition against Jews holding government positions, and a prohibition against their appearance in public places. Jews were also required to wear yellow stars to identify them in public areas. They were moved to the ghettos or confined spaces.

Violence and Concentration Camps

The first accounts of what happened during the holocaust were reports of the physical violence done to the Jews in Austria and Germany, where it was mentioned that Jewish establishments were looted and destroyed. The Jews were attacked and many of them were sent to concentration camps. There were concentration camps in Germany as well. Most camps were situated in the General Government area in Poland, but camps existed anywhere that was occupied by the Nazis. Transportation of the prisoners to camps was frequently done using inhumane means, such as the usage of freight cars wherein many people died even before reaching their camps.

Torture

The Nazis tortured and executed the Jews through these concentration camps, despite the camps establishment under the pretext of giving Jews jobs. The camps were put up for several purposes. These camps included extermination camps, transit camps, and labor camps.

In these camps, the Jews were held for varying durations and purposes. Until the end of World War II, these sites were settings for torture, experiments and murder. Camp prisoners died because of the harsh conditions or because they were executed.

As part of their admission to camp, prisoners were tattooed with their IDs. Those who were deemed fit for labor were sent to 12-14 hour shifts. Before their work, roll calls were done and they typically lasted for hours, which sometimes caused some of the prisoners to fall ill and die.

From the time of admission to their execution or death, prisoners were ordered to do a series of torturous tasks. Prisoners were whipped, hung, or beaten. Some prisoners were also arbitrarily shot.

Conditions were really inhumane. Prisoners weren’t given sufficient food and drink, they were given hard wood to sleep on, no bathrooms to use, and generally, they were treated very horribly. Without their consent, children and adults were used for unethical experiments.

The concentration camps were sites for extremely hard labor and many prisoners died from starvation.

The extermination camps were sites for mass murders. The Auschwitz camp, which is the most widely known extermination camp, is said to have killed more than 1 million Jews.

Children were very vulnerable during the holocaust. The Nazis killed the children of the “unwanted” groups as a response to the Nazis' ideological views and as a result of the racial struggle that was taking place. The estimated number of children killed during the Holocaust is known to have reached 1.5 million. This number includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, thousands of Gypsy children, and thousands of handicapped children who were murdered under the Nazi rule.

Those who survived the Holocaust were liberated from the concentration camps by the allied forces in 1944.