What is the Holocaust

The Holocaust is coined from the Greek words holos, meaning 'whole' and kaustos meaning 'burnt'.

Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the Jewish community became the target of hatred. Germany's defeat in World War I and the humiliation suffered during the economic depression was blamed on the Jews. Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer, has said, "The basic motivation behind the holocaust was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, non-pragmatic ideology; which was then executed by vary rational, pragmatic means."

Written official records claim that the Nazi regime systematically murdered about 11-17 million people. The victims of this horrific genocide included, six million Jews, clergymen who opposed the Nazi regime, Polish prisoners, resistance organizers, handicapped people, Soviet prisoners, homosexuals and even, priests from religious groups. Concentration camps were set up throughout Germany to house the prisoners. A concentration camp was actually a death camp, where the prisoners were used as slave labor.

The first Nazi concentration camp was Dachau concentration camp. In the initial stages of the Third Reich, the concentration camps were used for the purpose of holding the political prisoners of the Nazi regime, who had opposed or offended Hitler in any manner. In order to systematically exterminate the Jews, Hitler made detailed plans.

The basic objective behind the plan was genocide; however, the Nazis believed in making the death of their prisoners more painful. The Nazis initially constructed ghettos near major cities to amass the prisoners. Once the ghetto was full, the prisoners were transported to the concentration camps. The concentration camps were spread across the German-occupied Europe. Some of the most horrifying camps were found in Hungary and Poland, where huge populations of prisoners, prominently Jews were killed.

Though, the motive of concentration camps was slow murder of the prisoners, Hitler commanded his aides, namely, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, to find a 'final solution' to the 'Jewish' problem. The prominent German officials came to an even more horrible solution at the Wannsee Conference 'extermination' camps.

The extermination camps, built within the vicinity of the concentration camps, had facilities like gas chambers and rooms where inhuman medical experiments on people were carried out. The most heinous experiments were carried out by Dr. Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz camp. Some other camps, where experiments on prisoners were carried out, were the Dachau, Buchenwald and Natzwelier.

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the killings intensified. In many parts of occupied Soviet Union, many innocent Jew civilians were shot. The mass graves of these innocent victims were found in Soviet Union. The number of people shot at gunpoint shall always remain unaccounted.

Another horrifying part of the Holocaust was the death march. By the end of the World War II, the Soviet Red Army had successfully invaded the German-occupied territories of Eastern Europe. As the Red Army proceeded, the Germans began moving the prisoners to the west. This journey through the winter of Europe is known as the death march. The prisoners died due to starvation and exhaustion and many a times were shot dead, if they lacked behind.

The organization which was accused of the Holocaust, was Schutzstaffel (SS). At the Nuremberg trials, many Schutzstaffel officers were found guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Holocaust is one of the incidents in history that has displayed the most monstrous behavior of mankind. So savage was this incident that the exact figures of the victims shall never be known. Let the souls of those who died rest in peace.