Background to the Holocaust

During the Second World War, the Nazi party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler tried to kill all the Jews in Europe. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jewish people, including 1,500,000 children and thousands of Jewish communities were destroyed. This is now referred to as the Holocaust.

Jewish people had been living in Europe for over 2,000 years, longer than their Christian neighbours. Originally Jews lived in Palestine but the Romans drove them out of this land in ancient times and they settled in every continent around the world. They often lived peacefully alongside their non-Jewish neighbours.

Adolf Hitler hated Jews for no other reason than they were Jewish and he planned their mass murder. It is unknown whether this was his original intention, as it seems he originally planned to force them out of Germany. This plan eventually turned to genocide. In addition the Nazis murdered Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), black people, people with disabilities, homosexuals, non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war as well as thousands of anti-Nazis including many priests. Resistance fighters were imprisoned, tortured and killed. It was the Jews, however, whom the Nazis targeted for total annihilation. Technological and industrial methods, usually used to benefit society, were used to facilitate the murder process.

The Jews were usually a minority in the countries they lived in and therefore often became targets of persecution. The Jews in Germany, for example, in 1933, only formed just under 1% of the population (500,000 people in a total population of 70 million.) In Poland at this time there were approximately 3 million Jews out of a total population of 35 million. Although a minority, Jewish people worked in a wide range of occupations, shared a broad range of different economic backgrounds and political and religious convictions. There were tailors and bankers, working class and wealthy Jews. Some held Zionistic beliefs, others were socialists. There were religious, assimilated and secular Jews.

In virtually all of the countries occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, there were local people who participated in the mass murders of their Jewish neighbours. Some collaborated with the Nazis willingly, others were less visible in the perpetration of crimes against their Jewish neighbours. There were those who were bystanders and failed to speak out against the Nazi regime. A minority, however, acted as rescuers and helped the Jews at great risk to their own lives.