The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party").
The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people.
It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe.
An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered
Why did the Nazis want to kill large numbers of innocent people?
The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and "inferior races." Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were seen as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race" and therefore had to be "exterminated." The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties throughout Europe. Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians and others) were also consi dered "inferior" and destined to serve as slave labor for their German masters. Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and Free Masons were persecuted, imprisoned and often killed on political and behavioural (rather than racial) grounds . Sometimes the distinction was not very clear. Millions of Soviet Prisoners of War perished from starvation, disease and forced labor or were killed for racial political reasons.
The Holocaust began with Hitler's rise to power in January of 1933 and ended on VE Day (May 8, 1945). During this time, more than 6 million Jews and millions of other groups that caught the negative attention of Nazi Germany. While all the murders were devastating to native populations, none were so devastating than that of the Jews. During this period, 5,000 Jewish communities were wiped out and the total that died represented 1/3 of all Jewish people alive at that time.
By the end of 1934, Hiter's campaign against the Jews was in full force. The Nazis were claiming them to be mongrels who were corrupting the pure German race and persecutions of the Jewish grew in strength. Those who could flee Germany to other European countries which gave them safety for a while.
