Holocaust

 Fueled by long-fomenting antisemitism fanned by Germany’s Nazi Party in the 1930s, the Holocaust was the systematic, industrialized genocide of two-thirds of the European Jewish population in German-occupied areas throughout years before and during the Second World War. At least six million Jews were murdered first in pogroms and death squads, then extermination through labor, and gas chambers in camps throughout Germany and Eastern Europe. Antisemitism in Germany had been previously exacerbated by the country’s defeat in the First World War, wherein many Germans refused to acknowledge their nation had been defeated by anything other than Jews and Communists clandestinely operating at home. The short and long term effects of the Holocaust have been profound, deeply affecting many aspects of Jewish life, European and world politics, and the state of Israel.