Holocaust

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II. The exact number of deaths may never be known. But Europe contained 9.2 million Jews before the war and only 3.1 million after the end of the war. The genocide occurred under the government of Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. A third of the Jewish people and about 70% of the European Jewry was destroyed by Hitler´s savagery.

Prelude to the Holocaust
After the great economic crash of October 1929 Europe saw many extremist ideologies arising. In central and eastern Europe, the Jews were excluded from most economic activities.