The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews—around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe—between 1941 and 1945, during World War II.
Period: 1941 – May 8, 1945
Deaths: Around 6 million European Jews; using broadest definition, 17 million victims
Attack types: Genocide, Ethnic cleansing
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933. They believed that Germans were "racially superior." They claimed that Jews were "inferior" and a threat to the so-called German racial community.
