The Holocaust

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Overview

The Holocaust is the common name used to refer to the mass-exterminations of minorities in Europe during World War II. The overwhelming majority of the exterminations targeted Jews, but other minorities were also selected for extermination as part of "the cleaning" process.

Many groups and individuals have questioned the scale of the Holocaust, claiming either that it never happened or (more commonly) that it was significantly exaggerated in scope.

Exterminations, by group

  • Jews: ~6,000,000 (estimates range from 5 to 7 million, based in part on Nazi records)
  • Sinti and Roma: ~220,000 (estimates as high as 800,000, or about half their European population at the time)
  • Poles (6 million killed, of whom 3 million were Christian, and the rest Jewish)
  • Serbs (estimates vary between 500,000 and 1.2 million killed, mostly by Croat Ustaše)
  • Soviet military prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territories including Russians and other East Slavs
  • the mentally or physically disabled
  • homosexuals
  • Africans
  • Jehovah's Witnesses
  • Communists
  • political dissidents
  • trade unionists
  • Freemasons
  • Eastern Christians
  • Catholic and Protestant clergy

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Reference

News

Notes

It is apparently a myth that schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, although I have no references yet other than this. This assertion is, however, widely repeated by neoconservatives.